Summary

The medieval town ditch which ran around the outside of the town wall as an extra line of defence. The ditch has been excavated in several locations over the years, in places providing waterlogged deposits. It may have remained as an open feature in places until the 19th century.

Monument Type(s):

• TOWN DEFENCES (Later Medieval to Victorian - 1351 AD to 1888 AD)
• TOWN DITCH (Later Medieval to Victorian - 1351 AD to 1888 AD)

Protected Status: None recorded

Full description

1> Throughout its history the wall was accompanied by a defensive ditch in front of it. This generally measured up to 10m (33ft) wide and up to 3m (10ft) deep, although ground conditions sometimes resulted in it being wider or deeper in places, while corner-cutting meant that at other times it did not reach these proportions…Perhaps the foremost archaeological quality of the ditch is how varied is its size along its circuit and how different was the cleaning regime applied to the different lengths, from one gate to another and from one property to another. At times it was very poorly looked after and the City Leet Book records that it was often fouled with rubbish, requiring a Corporation order for its cleaning…Each length of ditch can be treated as a separate feature containing rubbish with a slightly different time span and range of finds from that next door in either direction, sometimes subjected to cleaning out, sometimes not, all eventually filled in (usually in different ways)…At [excavations in] Gosford Street (1991) , it was noted that the River Sherbourne ran parallel and so close to the wall that any ditch as such was dispensed with and the river itself served as the ditch-defence for a short distance along to Brick Kiln Lane (now Gulson Road).
2> The ditch is marked on the First Edition Ordnance Survey map of 1888 (1:2500 scale) in the area south of Cheylesmore Manor.
3> Excavations of the ditch found that its fill dated to the early 19th century in this location (Friar's Road).
4> When the City Walls were built, the river on this length [Gosford Street to Gulson Road] formed the ditch.
5> Excavation uncovered some 55m of the city ditch adjacent to Bond Street, into which four large sections were cut, three close to Hill Street and one at the junction with Upper Well Street. The excavations highlight the huge investment made in digging and maintaining the ditch as a defensive line for the first half of the 15th century before it was gradually mis-used for fly-tipping and eventually lost beneath a welter of dumping by the 17th century. It was probably indefensible long before the Civil War.
6> It is agreed that the wall between Bishop Street and Silver Street (Cook Street) was put up sometime in the late 14th or early 15th century. A reference in the Priory Cartulary suggests that the wall was not built all the way across in 1411 as a Cook Street tenement inside the city extended to the ditch, not the wall. The digging of the city defensive ditch is however, another matter and the exact date of its cutting between Bishop Street and Cook Street is known (John Smythier was Mayor = 1403), from the Priory Cartulary of 1411. During its excavation it cut across and reduced in length three gardens at the rear of Bishop Street and destroyed one and possibly two cottages at the end of Cook Street. Within the site the wall and ditch appear to have lain in areas which were gardens in 1403.

<1> Soden, Iain, 2005, Coventry: The Hidden History, p. 236-238 (TEXT). SCT1116.

<2> 1888, First Edition Ordnance Survey (Scale 1:10560) (-MAP). SCT976.

<3> Coventry Museums Archaeology Unit, 1990, Excavations on the Town Wall, Friar's Road, Coventry (--EXCAVATION REPORT). SCT338.

<4> J. B. Shelton, 1949, The Story of Twenty-Two Years Excavations in Coventry, p. 11 (-MANUSCRIPT). SCT1614.

<5> Northamptonshire Archaeology, 2008, Archaeological Excavations at Belgrade Plaza, Coventry, 2005-2007: Volume 1 - Text (--EXCAVATION REPORT). SCT705.

<6> Iain Soden Heritage Services Ltd, 2015, Bishop Street and Silver Street, Coventry. Archaeological Desk-Based Assessment., p.5-6 (--DESKBASED SURVEY REPORT). SCT2098.

Sources and Further Reading

Associated Finds: none recorded

Associated Events: none recorded

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