In the footsteps of Centurions – Part 1

Tracing the boundary of historic London in search of a dirty Roman ruin (no, not Silvio Berlusconi)

Walking the London Wall – Tower Hill to Cripplegate

Salters' Hall Garden and a section of London Wall: originally Roman, but incorporated into the 11th Century church of St Alphege, and with 15th Century brick battlements.

I recently attended a tour at the Museum Of London, of which more later, which (together with my recent visit to Reculver) inspired me to try and trace the line of the Wall that originally surrounded the City of London to see what remains. Roman in origin, the Wall has seen a swelling City burst its bounds over the following centuries and has at various times and in diverse places been altered, added to and obliterated. Yet, despite the phenomenal change the City has seen in the two thousand years since Roman invaders first settled there, some surprisingly large chunks of the Wall still remain, in wonderful juxtaposition to the modern office blocks. And its legacy can also be seen in any A to Z, in many of the street names and landmarks so familiar to modern Londoners, many of whom are likely to be entirely unaware of the history beneath their feet, or, as I discovered, tucked away around a corner or down an obscure sidestreet.

By and large, I followed the Museum’s ‘London Wall Walk’, originally devised in 1984 and marked with plaques along the route, some of which are in poor repair or have been removed as the City has rebuilt itself. The booklet that accompanied the Walk is out of print, but can be downloaded in sections from the Museum’s website; I’ve merged the separate sections into one handy pdf file which you can download here.

Start: Tower Hill Station TQ335807

Finish: Blackfriars Station TQ317808

Length: 1¾ miles; allow plenty of time for exploring

How to get there: Plenty of options! Tower Hill is on the Circle and District Lines and is also within a few minutes walk of Tower Gateway (Docklands Light Railway) and Fenchurch Street (National Rail, served by c2c). Currently, Blackfriars is a little more complicated in that the Underground station is closed while the National Rail station (served by First Capital Connect) is open on weekdays only while extensive engineering works are carried out as part of the Thameslink Programme. However, nearby alternatives are available – City Thameslink (National Rail) and Mansion House (Circle/District Lines) amongst others – and this being London there are plenty of buses serving both start and finish.

I begin at the eastern end of the Wall, by the splendour of the Tower of London, or rather just north of the moat surrounding the Tower. In the insalubrious surroundings of a pedestrian subway under the busy dual carriageway of Tower Hill above, in a glass-surrounded pit, are the remains of a mediaeval Postern Gate, which would have permitted the passage of pedestrians to and from the City.

The mediaeval Postern Gate beneath Tower Hill subway

Revealed in 1979 by excavations during the construction of the subway, this first part of the Wall I encounter is not Roman at all, but was built soon after the construction of the second (and present) moat at a cost of £21,000; this during King Edward I’s tenure of the Tower in the late 13th century, at a time when lions (and tigers?) and polar bears (oh my!) were among the menagerie kept there. Being adjacent to the moat, its foundations were on wet unstable ground which, in somewhat Pythonesque fashion, led the gate to collapse not once, but twice. According to William Gregory

the same yere [1431?], in the monythe of Juylle, the xvij day, the posterne be-syde the Towre sanke downe into the erthe vij fote and more

The workmen who built its replacement appear to have done a particularly shoddy job, proving that cowboy builders are no modern scourge; John Stow’s ‘A Survey of London‘, first published in 1598 and amazingly still in print today (and an absolutely fascinating read) records that

such was their negligence then, and hath bred some trouble to their successors, since they suffered a weake and wooden building to be there made, inhabited by persons of lewde life

No spirit level is needed to perceive the definite northwards tilt of the remains of the structure, as obvious to the eye as the arrowslits, the vertical groove that held a portcullis, and the socket holes for timber rafters formed in the creamy Caen stone.

The London Wall at Tower Hill, looking south towards the Tower.

Through the subway and up a flight of steps to Tower Hill tube station. At the barriered entrance London Underground staff are attempting to explain to tourists how to find alternative transport, given that, today, the station is closed due to engineering work. Seeing the difficulty they are having making themselves understood, they may as well be speaking Latin, the language of Marcus Ulpius Nerva Traianus, aka the Emperor Trajan, whose statue can be found at the foot of a colossal, monolithic slab of the Wall adjacent to the station. Although quite why Trajan should be honoured here is unclear: his reign as Emperor had ended in AD117 long before the Wall’s construction began in around AD200.

The Emperor Trajan posing in front of the Wall he didn't build

So if Trajan didn’t build the Wall, then who did? And why? It was built long after Londinium was attacked and destroyed by Iceni and Trinovantes forces led by Boudica in AD60. Indeed, rather than for the defence of Londinium against native British aggressors, it seems that the Wall was constructed during a period of civil war following the assassination of the Emperor Commodus on 31st December AD192 and the subsequent the Year of the Five Emperors. Commodus’ successor, Pertinax, Governor of Britain, met the same fate after only 3 months as Emperor – barely enough time to re-arrange the office furniture. Pertinax was followed – albeit briefly – by Didius Julianus who, having paid for his title by buying the loyalty of the Praetorian Guard (at a cost of 25,000 sestertii per soldier – 5,000 more than his rival Titus Flavius Sulpicianus offered) must have felt he’d wasted his money when he was assassinated three months later by Septimius Severus, Governor of Pannonia (roughly the area known until recently as Yugoslavia).

At this point, despite the lack of job security, two other contenders decided they quite fancied having a go at being Emperor: Pescennius Niger, Governor of Syria, and Clodius Albinus, Governor of Britain – the latter is believed to have ordered the construction of the Wall to fortify the territory under his control. But Albinus forwent this home advantage by playing away in Gaul in AD197 at the Battle of Lugdunum, where he met Severus who had already defeated Niger in AD194. After two days of bloody fighting, Albinus either killed himself or was executed by order of Severus, who, being the compassionate type, deliberately rode his horse over Albinus’ naked body. Then beheaded the corpse. Then killed Albinus’ wife and children. Then threw all their bodies in the Rhine. Then sent Albinus’ severed head to Rome as a warning to his supporters. Professional jealousy rarely gets this bad, not even on The Apprentice.

London Wall, Tower Hill. The red tiles of the Roman levelling courses are clearly visible, as is the rubble core where the facework has been lost

This section of the Wall is some 35 feet high in total but only the lowest 14 feet are Roman, the Wall above this height being a mediaeval addition. At first glance, there is little to discern one section of stonework from the other, both being of similar creamy-grey Kentish ragstone, but on closer inspection the higher quality craftsmanship of the Roman section becomes apparent: the coursing is more regular, and at intervals there are levelling courses of red tile, both decorative and functional. In places the facework has been lost revealing the rubble and mortar core, although some refacing carried out in mediaeval times is evident.

The northern end of the Tower Hill section ends opposite the blue hoardings of a building site. I follow the line of these round to the side that faces across the cobbles to Trinity House, its golden ships sailing high above the roofline. A perspex window in the hoarding allows a glimpse of a deep excavation on the far side of which the adjacent building appears to utilise part of the Wall for its footings. I head north along Cooper’s Row, following a path parallel to the alignment of the Wall, trying to determine from the map when I will encounter it next. At the Grange City Hotel, a nondescript modern tower, I glance to the right: a low wide passageway, leading to the hotel’s underground car park and a courtyard, beyond which I’m initially taken aback to see a slab of random-coursed ragstone: another massive section of Wall.

The Wall in the courtyard of the Grange City Hotel at Cooper's Row, including mediaeval archer's loopholes and socket holes for timber rafters

The division between early Roman and later mediaeval is again clear once you know what to look for, but here the mediaeval elevation includes arched loopholes. Originally accessed by a long-disappeared timber platform and used by archers in defence of the city, they now provide a comfortable roost for cooing pigeons. Steps up and through an arch permit access to the other side of the Wall, and, looking back from outside the old City boundary, I am able to appreciate what a formidable defensive structure this must have seemed. Yet, surrounded by modern buildings which tower above it on either side, the Wall now seems inconsequential and entirely incongruous in the modern City.

Along Vine Street and under the dingy arches of the railway into Fenchurch Street station, I head past the shiny gaudiness of One America Square, an office building with unsuccessful pretensions to be a New York skyscraper, and over Crosswall – a street whose name should be self-explanatory. Turning left onto India Street brings me to Crutched Friars Street (one of those fantastically enigmatic City street names – in this case named after an order of monks who arrived in England from Italy in the 13th Century) where the somewhat tacky columns and portico of an office block named Roman Wall House indicate I’m still following the correct alignment.

Aldgate: looking east to without the City

Jewry Street (with on my right, the attractive redbrick Technical Institute built by Sir John Cass’s Foundation, a name synonymous with education in the City, and now part of London Metropolitan University) leads northwards to Aldgate, the easternmost of the gates in the Wall which in Roman times gave access to the road to Camulodunum (modern Colchester). The original Roman gate survived until mediaeval times when it was rebuilt, firstly in 1108 to 1147, and again in 1215 – this structure included apartments above the gate itself, home to Geoffrey Chaucer from 1374. A further rebuilding was undertaken in 1607, surviving until 1761 when it was finally pulled down (and re-erected temporarily in Bethnal Green). Aldgate would be very alien to Chaucer now: banks and insurance companies occupy the shining glass and steel office blocks; only the church of St Botolph Without Aldgate, built in the 1740s, would be vaguely familiar to residents of centuries past. A note on City church names: a church that includes ‘Without’ in its name is one located outside the City wall, or outside a particular Parish. Hence, ‘St Botolph Without Aldgate’ refers to the church of St Botolph outside Aldgate.

Bevis Marks Synagogue

Having been following a largely northerly course, I now veer slightly northwest along Duke’s Place and onto Bevis Marks, in a courtyard off which is the Wren-style Bevis Marks Synagogue, Britain’s oldest. This gives a clue (along with the streetname of Old Jewry) to the fact that this area was home to an early colony of Sephardic Jews who settled in London in around 1655, around the time Oliver Cromwell allowed Jews to return to England, many years after their expulsion at the hands of Edward I in 1290. Frustratingly, I’m 20 minutes too late to explore the Synagogue which is now closed, so I continue along Bevis Marks to Camomile Street, apparently so named for the herb that used to grown on top of the Wall here. No Wall remains, nor Camomile, nor plant life of any other species – only the glinting glass of Heron Tower, the City’s tallest building (for now) and second tallest in London (for now) after Canary Wharf.

Bishopsgate: looking north to without the City

The plethora of skyscrapers in this area couldn’t be more different from the structure that originally gave this area its name: Bishopsgate, which guarded the entrance to the Roman City from Ermine Street, the Roman Road to Lincoln, York and the north. Like Aldgate, it was rebuilt in mediaeval times (in 1479), when it featured the grisly sight of the severed heads of criminals mounted on spikes. Like Aldgate, Bishopsgate was finally pulled down in 1761 and also has a church dedicated to St Botolph. Bishopsgate is also associated with a more recent defensive fortification: the ‘Ring of Steel’ erected around the City following the IRA bomb in 1993.

George Dance the Younger's church of All Hallows on the Wall, built 1765-67

West of Bishopsgate, I follow Wormwood Street (like Camomile Street, named for the plant that grew on the mediaeval Wall) past City Wall House, a nondescript office building, to London Wall, the street whose name gives the most obvious clue to the alignment I am following. Then to the church of All Hallows on the Wall which, as the name suggests, was literally built on the Wall by George Dance the Younger in the 1760s. The blackened, sooty, fern and moss-encrusted brick wall – complete with cast iron parish boundary marker with the legend ‘W A H 1888′ – which forms a boundary to the north of the small but pleasant gardened churchyard is clearly neither Roman nor mediaeval. But excavations in 1905 revealed that this structure utilises the Roman Wall for its foundations, 13 feet below current ground level, while the curved north wall of the church is believed to follow the line of a Roman bastion.

Looking east along London Wall; Heron Tower dwarfs surrounding buildings

Further westwards along London Wall, past attractive Victorian buildings and the former site of the second Bethlem Hospital, or ‘Bedlam’, which moved there in 1676 into buildings designed by Robert Hooke. The hospital’s original location from its founding in 1247 was on a site now occupied by Liverpool Street station; in 1815 it moved again to the building that now houses the Imperial War Museum in Southwark, leaving here in 1930 for its present home in Beckenham, Kent.

Beyond Finsbury Circus, I come to Moorgate. Like the postern at Tower Hill, Moorgate was not Roman in origin, but came later. John Stow describes the construction of Moorgate:

Touching the next Posterne, called Moregate, I finde that Thomas Falconer Maior about the yeare 1415. the thirde of Henry the fift, caused the wall of the Cittie to be broken neare vnto Colemanstreete, and there builded a Posterne, now called Moregate, vpon the Moore side where was neuer gate before. This gate he made for ease of the Cittizens, that way to pass vpon causeys into the fielde for their recreation: For the same field was at that time a Marrish.

Moorgate: looking north to without the City

The ‘Moore’ or ‘Marrish’ (marsh) Stow refers to is the area now known as Moorfields, an area of marshland formed when the City wall dammed the Walbrook which originally drained it. Like the other gates I have encountered so far Moorgate was rebuilt a number of times over the years: firstly in 1415, then enlarged in 1472 and 1511, then rebuilt in 1672 after the Great Fire of London. As at Aldgate and Bishopsgate, Moorgate was demolished in 1761 and its stonework re-used in the to support a widened centre arch of London Bridge.

The modern road of London Wall curves to a westerly alignment and diverges from the line of Wall itself which continues roughly northwest, parallel to Fore Street, the birthplace in 1850 of Ebenezer Howard, founder of the Garden City Movement. Into the concrete labyrinth of the Barbican Development, to the Salters’ Hall, home to one of the twelve great livery companies, which has a splendid garden bounded on the southern side by a huge section of the Wall. The steps to the garden are, frustratingly, closed off so I continue along Fore Street, past a plaque that commemorates the site of the first bomb to land on the City in the Second World War – at 12.15 am on 25th August 1940. Turning left onto Wood Street at Roman House, an empty and frankly hideous 1960s style office block, then left again onto St Alphage Gardens allows access to the Wall.

The south face of the Wall at St Alphage Gardens

The name of the street here derives from the church of St Alphage or St Alphege, which stood on the site, dedicated to St Alfege, a martyr bloodily murdered by Vikings in 1012 who ‘at a feast on Easter Day…bludgeoned him with ox bones and the hafts of their axes until one of the Danes, out of compassion, killed him by a single blow to the head with his axe‘. Established in the 11th century and incorporating the Wall into its structure on its northern side, the church survived until (as a well-weathered plaque on the Wall explains) it was closed by Act of Parliament in the 16th century and demolished. Its churchyard was on the north side of the Wall, on the site now occupied by the Salters’ Hall Garden. The Wall itself, despite being incorporated into a place of worship, retained its defensive function and, as in so many other places, was rebuilt and fortified over the years. Substantial alterations were made in 1477, during the Wars of the Roses. Stow’s ‘A Survey of London’ was revised and republished in 1720 by John Strype in which Strype states:

….shortly after, to wit, in 1477, Ralph Joceline, Maior, for repairing of the Wall of the City, caused the said More [Moorfields] to be searched for Clay, and Brick to be burnt there, &c. by which means this Field was made worse for a long time.

These later fortifications are still visible as crenellations of red brick, constructed on the earlier ragstone; on the southern face, archetypal Tudor decoration of diagonal crosses in darker brick.

The remaining structure of the Priory of St Mary-Within-Cripplegate

In fact there have been two churches here. The other was founded in around 1000 as the Priory Church of the monastery of St Mary-Within-Cripplegate. By 1329 the monastery had fallen into decline and a hospital, Elsing Spital, was established on the site by William Elsing which survived until the dissolution of the monasteries in 1536. The Priory took over as the Parish Church when St Alphege closed, and was rebuilt numerous times over the centuries until it was mostly demolished in 1923 having been damaged by bombs in the First World War. Now, only three sides and the arched stone windows of a 14th century flint tower remain, looking entirely out of place just off London Wall. The crumbling stonework in which Buddleja bushes are precariously rooted has revealed the steps of a spiral staircase that ascend the tower. The owners of the feet that smoothed away the sandstone treads centuries ago would be dazzled by the scene here now.

The Highwalk above St Alphage makes a great vantage point from which to view the revered but somewhat forlorn ruins of the Wall and the Priory. But there is a far greater air of desolation and abandonment to the grey 1960s architecture of the surroundings: St Alphage Tower stands neglected and empty, awaiting redevelopment; bars and banks are boarded up; rainwater forms dirty puddles. Maybe its just because I’m here at the weekend when the City empties – high above the traffic on London Wall below, the only other human presence is that of a homeless man in a sleeping bag, smoking skinny roll-ups in the shelter of a doorway.

Part 2 of this walk, from Cripplegate to Blackfriars and taking in the Roman Fort and Amphitheatre, can be found here