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Monument Types

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

Associated Events

• City Walls Road (Ref: WCM100086)
• Friars Gate, Union Street (Ref: WCM100263)
• Borehole F, City Walls Road (Ref: WCM100497)
• Borehole H, City Walls Road (Ref: WCM100498)
• City wall (Ref: WCM100499)
• City wall (Ref: WCM100500)
• City wall (Ref: WCM100505)
• City Ditch, Bowling Green Terrace (Ref: WCM100656)
• CCTV Phase 8 - City Walls Road (Clare Street car park & Windsor Row) (Ref: WCM100907)
• City Walls, East (Bowling Green Terrace) (Ref: WCM100949)

Full description

City ditch, constituent of medieval city defences WCM 96100.

This part of the extramural ditch appears as a stream (the Frog Brook) on Speed’s map of 1610 and as a conventionalised ditch on the 1651 map editions. Doharty’s map of 1741 shows it as a strip of land with trees between the city wall and the Frog Brook. Broad’s map of 1768 and Young’s map of 1779 show the course of the ditch as a strip of garden ground between the city wall and the Frog Brook.

Excavated evidence for the presence of the ditch was first noted by Richardson (1957) who reported black soil to a depth of seven feet with no bottom found when digging a saw pit adjoining Crockett’s Mineral Water Factory in Bowling Green Terrace {1}. Some time between 1967 and March 1969 Philip Barker excavated a complete section across the ditch in Bowling Green Terrace (WCM 100656) as an early part of the archaeological response to the impending City Walls Road scheme. The ditch was proved to be flat bottomed, 32 feet (9.75 metres) wide and 6 feet (1.83 metres) deep. Its lower fill was a ‘heavy plastic blue-grey clay’ merging into an overlying brown clay with recent earth and rubble deposits above. Finds were confined to a few medieval cooking pot sherds close to the city wall footings (96109). Barker suggested that the ditch had never been scoured out, contrary to various documentary references suggesting that it had been and that the waters of the Barbourne Brook had been diverted into the ditch to cleanse it {2}.

Bennett found the western edge of the ditch in several excavations along the city wall in 1973. WCM 100499 (Bennett’s trench V site 16/11) consisted of three soundings. The edge of the medieval city ditch was excavated in all three; in two of the soundings an earlier, pre-city wall ditch (WCM 96394) was also identified {3}. Bennett’s trench VI (WCM 100500; 16/12) was dug at right-angles to the city wall to establish the width of the extramural ditch. This was found to be c.9 metres but the ditch was not bottomed. A bore-hole 9 metres to the south found the bottom of the ditch at 3.6 metres below 1973 ground level {4}. WCM 100505 (16/17, Bennett’s trench XI) was a mechanically-excavated section through the ditch, which was 10.5 metres wide, 3.25 metres deep and 1.10 metres deep below the bottom city wall plinth course. It was flat bottomed with no berm, with a sequence of fills similar to that recorded by Barker (dark grey clay basal fills, dark brown and dark grey clays over) {5}.

need to cross-ref / add new event for Richardson Crockett's observation

Cross-reference to: 96135, city ditch, Sidbury Gate – Friars Gate
Cross-reference to: 96137, city ditch, St Martin’s Gate – Trinity Gate
Cross-reference to: 96106, Friars Gate
Cross-reference to: 96107, City Wall, Greyfriars
Cross-reference to: 96108, City Wall, line of, Charles Street
Cross-reference to: 96109, City Wall,
Cross-reference to: 96110, bastion, City Wall,
Cross-reference to: 96111, City Wall, south of St Martin’s Gate
Cross-reference to: 96112, St Martin’s Gate
Cross-reference to: 96148, Civil War bastion

Sources and further reading

Related records

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