| Description: | A generic monument number for the City Wall during the Civil War. A number of observations have been made of what is demonstrably Civil War fabric in the wall at a number of locations, some backed up by documentary evidence (Monument No.s 10320-10324): these are dealt with separately. Of the wall during the Civil War, Blaylock states: ‘the Receiver's Accounts (Juddery et al. 1988) and the Siege Accounts (Stoyle 1988) provide a wealth of information… Of the vast sum of £4374 11s 3½d spent on fortifications in 1642-3 some £432 was spent on work at the Castle (DD 391 H35v-43v; Stoyle 1988, 31-46), seemingly in Heavitree stone, i.e. breccia… Southernhay, where expenditure of some £82 is specified, may have received work to the walls but much of the sum must have been spent on earthworks.
The association of several builds which contain small windows or gun ports with works of the Civil War is not inconsistent with the conclusions drawn at the castle: all are mostly breccia and show no relationships which may preclude a mid 17th-century date… The accounts contain a number of payments for the cutting or insertion of datestones in the walls in 1642-3 (RAB 1642-3, f. 7), 1643-4 (RAB 1643-4, ff. 4, 5 & 12), and 1644-5 (RAB 1644-5, f. 4). No such datestones, with inscriptions, survive from this period. There is a large slab of Purbeck stone of integral construction in section 9.6 (iv) in Northernhay Street. The surface of the stone is weathered and no trace of an inscription survives but it is possible that this stone was one of the datestones. The first such stone mentioned in the account of 1643-4 is amongst payments for the rebuilding of a section of decayed wall in Northernhay which employed 224 seams of Heavitree stone and which, it is suggested below, can be identified with section 9.6 (iv). Other large slabs of Purbeck stone in the walls (a unique usage, this material has not been observed in regular facework, even as an accidental) are almost certainly weathered datestones, although their date is uncertain. One of the 18th-century datestones is also of this material…
A number of cruder sections of masonry also may be identifiable as additions of the Civil War period. A particular aid to identification here is the use of a pink Permian or Triassic sandstone somewhat resembling the white variety already mentioned but normally used in crudely shaped blocks for parapets etc.’ (Blaylock, S.R., 1991 ‘Exeter City Defences: a fabric survey of the City Wall’, EMAFU 91.56, 4). |
|---|