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Monument Types

• STRUCTURE (Unknown date)
• TOWN WALL (MEDIEVAL - 1066 AD to 1539 AD)
• TOWN WALL (POST MEDIEVAL - 1540 AD to 1900 AD)

Associated Events

• Evaluation, Dyson Perrins Museum extension (Ref: WCM100146)
• Dyson Perrins Museum extension (Ref: WCM100172)
• Dyson Perrins Museum extension (Ref: WCM100185)
• Watching brief, Dyson Perrins Museum (Ref: WCM100386)
• Seconds Shop, RWP (Ref: WCM100387)
• City Wall, Royal Worcester Canteen (Ref: WCM100466)
• Dyson Perrins Museum extension - general number (Ref: WCM101174)
• Royal Worcester Porcelain Area C (St Peter's Street), watching brief, GI (Ref: WCM102044)
• Severn Street Area C, watching brief (second phase) (Ref: WCM102120)
• Land at Worcester Porcelain Museum (Ref: WCM102154)

Full description

City wall, line of; constituent of the medieval defences WCM 96100.

The general line of the city wall from the corner and tower by St Peter the Great (church WCM 96037, tower WCM 96131) is established from the cartographic sequence.

Speed’s map of 1610 shows the city wall with the ditch outside heading south from Sidbury Gate (WCM 96101), to a corner tower behind St Peter’s church (WCM 96131), and from there north-west to the Frog Gate (WCM 96129). The same features are shown on the 1651 map editions. This stretch of wall does not appear at all on Doharty’s plan of 1741, but does appear on Broad’s map of 1768, as a conventionally rendered section of the city wall. Its line appears as a continuous straight property boundary on Young’s map of 1779, bounding St Peter’s churchyard (WCM 96038) and forming the back fence line of plots on King Street between c.22m and c.36m south of it (east end and west end). The first edition O.S. 1:500 plan of 1886 also shows a continuous back boundary to the King Street plots, 22m to 38m from the street, and identifies it as the city wall. It formed the north boundary of two adjacent school buildings and their playgrounds, which are shown as the line of the city ditch (WCM 96133).

Richardson (1957) discussed a plan in the possession of Worcester Royal Porcelain of: ‘The site of the Diglis National Schools, Worcester’, showing the course of the city wall from St Peter’s churchyard, ‘along the line of the north wall of the girls’ entrance to the schools, to Diglis, now Severn Street. The ‘Diglis National Schools’ part of St Peter’s Schools, bears the date 1843: the girls’ entrance to the original schools has been taken into the part added in 1891, and is now the main entrance’ {1}.

Richardson also noted that when the WRP new canteen was built in 1956-7 the old city wall was encountered and that ‘the wall of the former infants’ school left standing flush with the south wall of the new canteen is built on the foundation of the old wall (WCM 100466).

In 1996 a geophysical survey east of the Dyson Perrins Museum building, and within it, and in Severn Street to the west, detected what was thought to be the line of the city wall using GPR (WCM 100172). An evaluation trench to the east failed to find the wall, though an associated borehole survey found deep deposits consistent with the presence of the city ditch (WCM 100146) {2}. Subsequent salvage excavation on the strip footing trenches for the museum extension found that the site had been significantly reduced in the 19th century down to a 12th/13th-century horizon, and no trace of the wall survived. The ditch was not apparent within the limited depth of the excavation, other than as a zone of darker soils at the south end of the site (WCM 100185) {3}.

add GPR as source ref
RWP eval 2005
later work on Royal Worcester Porcelain site C

Sources and further reading

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