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| Name: | City Ditch, St Martin’s Gate – Trinity Gate |
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| HER Reference: | WCM96137 |
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| Type of record: | Monument |
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| Grid Reference: | SO 851 550 |
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| Map Sheet: | SO85NE |
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| Parish: | Worcester (Non Civil Parish), Worcester City, Worcestershire |
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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 wall excavation, Queen Street (Ref: WCM100233)
Full description
City ditch, constituent of medieval city defences WCM 96100.
This part of the extramural ditch is shown as a conventionalised watercourse at the rear of housing on Silver Street on Speed’s map of 1610; it is not represented on the 1651 map editions. By the time of Doharty’s map of 1741 the ditch had disappeared and been replaced by Watercourse Alley, whose east side was built up by housing behind that on the Silver Street frontage. The same situation is shown in more detail by George Young’s map of 1779. The first edition O.S. plans of the 1880s show Watercourse Alley densely built up on both sides with back-to-back terrace housing.
There are no complete profiles for this part of the city ditch, though its western edge was contacted by an excavation by Bennett. In WCM 100233 (Carver site 16/7, Bennett’s trench I) the city ditch lay one metre east of the city wall (WCM 96113) and had a steeply sloping inner lip and a flat bottom. The upper fills contained 13th-14th-century pottery, lumps of iron slag and cess staining. Stake holes may have represented an ephemeral revetment to the ditch edge. The city wall had been built in a stepped construction cut suggesting to the excavator that the defences had utilised a natural east-facing slope; the sequence had been truncated by the cellar of no.2 Queen Street {1}.
Cross-reference to: 96136, city ditch, Friars Gate – St Martin’s Gate
Cross-reference to: 96138, city ditch, Trinity Gate – North Gate
Cross-reference to: 96112, St Martin’s Gate
Cross-reference to: 96114, Trinity Gate
Sources and further reading
| <1*> | Article in serial: Bennett, J. 1980. Excavation and survey on the medieval city wall, 1973. Trans Worcestershire Archaeol Soc. Worcestershire Archaeological Society. 3rd ser., 7. 73. |
Related records
| WCM96100 | Part of: The medieval city defences (Monument) |
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