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Monument Types

• RAMPART (MEDIEVAL - 1066 AD to 1539 AD (between))

Associated Events

• 31 Sidbury (Clapton's Bakery) (Ref: WCM100045)
• Sidbury Excavation (49-55 Friar Street = 23-29 Sidbury) (Ref: WCM100154)
• 49-55 Friar Street (Ref: WCM100155)
• Rear of 49-55 Friar Street (Ref: WCM100156)
• 37, 49-55 Friar Street (Ref: WCM100186)
• City Wall, Sidbury (Ref: WCM100188)
• 37, 49-55 Friar Street (Ref: WCM100198)
• Union Street (Ref: WCM100199)
• Friars Gate, Union Street (Ref: WCM100263)
• 61 Sidbury (Ref: WCM100462)
• 37, 49-55 Friar Street (Ref: WCM100525)
• City Ditch, Bowling Green Terrace (Ref: WCM100656)
• Friar Street (cinema) project (Ref: WCM100810)
• Rear of 9 New Street (Ref: WCM101040)
• Rear of 4-5 Cornmarket (Ref: WCM101049)

Full description

Bank or rampart, either predating or contemporary with construction of the City Wall. A component of the medieval city defences WCM 96100.

First identified by Shearer in 1959 (WCM 100045). His section through the city wall behind no.31 Sidbury found ‘a definite bank of brown and greenish clay 16ft wide, the front of which had been cut away to insert the wall foundations. This bank rested on a layer of black humus which must represent the turf line pre-dating the defences’. This buried soil contained a late 12th-century piece of pottery; a deposit of material above the bank contained mid-14th-century and later material {1}. The excavation of a similar sequence in Sidbury was also reported by Donald McNair in 1959 (WCM 100188) in which it was found that: ‘the medieval wall had been built into an earlier clay ramp, dated to the second half of the twelfth century {2}.

The bank was identified later in an adjacent trench by Hirst (1975, WCM 100156, period 4b). A series of banded layers of olive grey clay and mixed sandy soil were interpreted as a defensive bank extending c.5.3 metres wide from the back of the city wall. It was constructed in two phases and dated probably to the second half of the 13th century or later, and was cut by the foundations of the city wall. It was just possible that stakeholes at the southern end of the trench west of the bank were from a palisade preceding it and the city wall {3}.

Carver’s excavation trenches D2 (north-south) and E (WCM 100154) examined the city wall sequence and found beneath post-medieval quarry backfill a clay bank containing 12th – 14th-century pottery and post-holes parallel to the city wall. There was no exact equivalent in Hirst’s trench except for the layers comprising the second constructional phase (V) of her pre-city wall bank {4}.
Jan Wills also identified a pre city wall bank, as found by Shearer, on her 1976 Union Street excavation (WCM 100263; the Friars Gate, WCM 96106). The construction cut for the city wall (construction dated to in or after the 13th century) was found to cut through an earlier clay and pebble bank, equated by Wills with that described by Shearer and Hirst {5}.

A clay and pebble layer excavated 30 metres to the south west by Courtney and Newman (1983, WCM 100199) was seen in a very restricted exposure but recognised by them as ‘similar to the matrix of a bank noted on the inside of the city wall elsewhere in Worcester’ {6}.

Further north, Barker’s excavations at Bowling Green Terrace in 1967-9 (WCM 100656) included preliminary sections cut behind the city wall, which was found to be standing ‘against a clay bank’ {7}.

Jackson et al 2001 come to a different conclusion based on the 37-55 Friar Street evaluation (WCM 100198), trench 12, dug in 1998. There, the bank of redeposited natural materials (assumed from the excavation for city ditch WCM 96135) butted directly against the back of the city wall (WCM 96103) masonry sealing the latter’s narrow construction cut. The excavators suggested the bank was an immediately post-wall feature and that the previous investigations had been misled by secondary cuts into the bank to effect later repairs to the city wall with reclaimed materials.

Assessment: evidence seems equivocal. If city wall masonry was laid against the cut face of an earlier bank no cut need be visible in section. Were Shearer’s, (not mentioned by Jackson) Hirst’s, and Wills’s excavations all coincidentally located at points where repairs and alterations to the city wall fabric involved total replacement of full thickness of wall core (resulting in new cut in bank material to rear)? On the other hand Jackson et al’s fig.24 (trench 12 section) seems clear enough, with the bank material (context group 204) sealing a cut containing the lower part of the city wall core {8}.

The piling up of excavated ditch material behind the new, contemporary, town wall mass is also a feature of the 13th-century defences of Shrewsbury.

NB this is a general number which may need subdivision, especially if it is thought that there was more than one bank (esp in Hirst exc)
add 101040 4-5 Cmkt
add 101049 9 New St


Cross-reference to: 96102, city wall, line of, Clare Street
Cross-reference to: 96104, city wall, line of, south of Friars Gate
Cross-reference to: 96105, city wall, tower T1
Cross-reference to: 96107, city wall, standing section
Cross-reference to: 96108, city wall, line of, Charles Street
Cross-reference to: 96109, city wall, standing section, standing section
Cross-reference to: 96136, city ditch, Friars Gate – St Martin’s Gate
Cross-reference to: 96101, Sidbury Gate

Sources and further reading

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