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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

• 16-18 Sansome Street (Ref: WCM100091)
• 16/18 Sansome Street (Ref: WCM101054)
• 16/18 Sansome Street - watching brief (Ref: WCM101106)
• 16/18 Sansome Street (Ref: WCM101111)

Full description

City ditch, constituent of medieval city defences WCM 96100.

Not shown directly by Speed’s map of 1610 though implied by a continuation of the symbol for the ditch watercourse from south of Trinity Gate. Nor is it shown by the 1651 map editions (concealed by the wall in the foreground). By 1741 (Doharty’s map) the line of the ditch was largely built over by structures facing north onto Sansome Street (formerly Town Ditch), and the western end of the ditch must have been infilled before or in 1703 when the city workhouse (WCM 96075) was built adjacent to the site of the north gate.

In 1645 Prince Maurice is described as having built an extra defence outside the main ditch on the north-east (Droitwich) side of the city, because the ditch here was not water-filled, as it was everywhere else. The new work was said to be ‘a low breast work, and a stockade without: the top of the breast work is not a foot above the ground outside. Very necessary to safeguard a dry ditch and wall’ {1}. This seems to imply the ditch here was used as a fire trench (?)

The ditch has been sampled archaeologically on WCM 100091, 16 Sansome Street. Boreholes indicated the natural profile sloping downwards from a probable berm in front of the city wall (WCM 96115) to a peat layer at a depth of c.3.9 metres, probably in the ditch bottom. Differences in the deposit sequence in two adjacent boreholes may reflect a change in the course of the ditch around the Civil War bastion (WCM 96146) predictable in this area. Deposits of Civil War and later date survive from a depth of c.1metre below modern ground level {2}.

add ref to Napthan 2003

Cross-reference to: 96137, city ditch, St Martin’s Gate – Trinity gate
Cross-reference to: 96139, city ditch, North Gate – St Clements
Cross-reference to: 96114, Trinity Gate
Cross-reference to: 96116, North Gate

Sources and further reading

Related records

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