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Monument Types

• TOWN WALL (MEDIEVAL - 1066 AD to 1539 AD (between))
• TOWN WALL (POST MEDIEVAL - 1540 AD to 1900 AD (between))

Associated Events

• City Wall, Dents Glove Factory (Ref: WCM100189)
• Copenhagen Street Car Park (Ref: WCM100209)
• Copenhagen Street Car Park (Ref: WCM100211)
• Copenhagen Street Car Park (Ref: WCM100212)
• Copenhagen Street Car Park (Ref: WCM100213)
• Copenhagen Street Car Park (Ref: WCM100712)
• Copenhagen Street Car Park (extension to 1968 excavation) (Ref: WCM100713)

Full description

City wall, line of / buried remains; part of medieval city defences, 96100.

A c.80-metre stretch of wall extending from Warmstry Slip to the Bishop’s Palace riverside wall (WCM 96627).

No wall at all in this area is shown on Speed’s map of 1610. The 1651 map (various editions) shows a featureless wall continuous along the riverside from Warmstry Slip to the Bishop’s Palace and beyond. Doharty’s map of 1741 shows the same, with no emphasis on the city wall line. Broad’s map of 1768 shows the riverside wall deliberately as the city wall (using his normal masonry convention). This suggests that the Porcelain Manufactory site and the adjoining property to the south (later Dent’s Glove factory) were both terminated at the riverside by a masonry wall that was then taken to be the old city wall. Young’s map of 1779 shows that the porcelain works had by then been extended over the wall line (which has disappeared) with a new factory building at the riverside end of the property adjoining the south boundary. The new building’s west wall looks as if it had been founded on the old city wall line. The wall line resumes on the next-door property but shown only faintly, a few feet forward (west of) the riverside wall below the Bishop’s Palace (WCM 96627).

Investigated by Henry Sandon on the Porcelain Manufactory site (WCM 96184) in a number of individual interventions between 1968 and 1984, looking for porcelain waster sequences dumped over the riverside wall.

The first trench (1968, extended 1969: WCM 100209, 100713) measured 60ft by 10ft and was laid out ‘inland from the riverside wall’. It found that the sandstone riverside wall was rebuilt in brick in the 19th century, and that a ‘large sand bank’ had been used as a flood defence. The excavation just reached early 18th-century levels {1} {2} {3}.

The riverside wall was explored more thoroughly in Sandon’s 1977 ‘area 2’ (WCM 100211), where it was first exposed as the west brick wall of the factory, founded on a north-south sandstone wall, stepped out in three stages, extending to a depth greater than 6.71m (22ft); it was investigated over a length of 12 feet (3.66m) {4} {5}. Presumably this brick wall was first built as a garden / boundary wall for Warmstry House (WCM 96468), whose gardens were developed as a factory by the porcelain company.

The Sandons dug two further trenches in 1978 (WCM 100212) and 1979 (WCM 100712) to explore dumping over a slipway extending outside the wall. The 1978 trench reached river clay deposits at a depth of 13-15.5ft, sloping down to the west and covered by a sequence of dumping interrupted by an east-west wall {6}.

The 1979 trench nearby found the riverside wall at a depth of 2.98m topped by a brick successor wall. The excavation reached natural river clay outside the wall at a depth of 4.25m {7}.

In 1984 the then standing riverside wall (extended out beyond the city/riverside wall in the 1760s) was removed and the area landscaped. Ceramic deposits were recovered but early levels were not reached and the original riverside wall was not exposed {8}.

Cross-reference to: 96127, City Wall, line of, The Quay – Warmstry Slip

Sources and further reading

Related records

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