Publications
Chichester City Walls, by Andrew Westman, published 2012 (124 pp., Chichester District Council, ISBN-10: 0957301804 & ISBN-13: 9780957301801) accessible at: West Sussex Libraries
Review by David RRudkin in Sussex Past & Present no. 130, August 2013:For anyone with an interest in urban defences and those of Chichester in particular, this excellent publication will be greeted with great pleasure.
Chichester can boast the most intact circuit of Roman town defences in southern England with 80% still standing in some form. However, they have had a chequered history which has been a cycle of care when there has been a threat of attack, or when their civic amenity has been recognised, and wilful neglect when the threat has gone away or better access through the walls was required.
Happily, the city walls are receiving more tender loving care today than in the past, thanks largely to the City Walls Project, created by the City Walls Partnership, a like-minded group of organisations with an interest in the walls and their care, with support from the Heritage Lottery Fund.
It was this group that commissioned Museum of London Archaeology to produce Chichester City Walls, involving a considerable amount of documentary research and the generous help of local archaeologists and archivists with long involvement in the archaeology and history of the city.
It was a revelation to read that there have now been fifty recorded archaeological interventions into the defences since the first in 1885. This was the uncovering of the foundations of one of the bastions of the South West quadrant. It seems very appropriate that the fiftieth intervention was also the uncovering of the foundations of a nearby bastion which had been revealed by geophysical survey.
The author, Andrew Westman, looks at almost two millennia of history, beginning with the positioning of the original town in relation to the road system and noting that evidence found in 2010 may indicate the existence of the original pomarium, or boundary ditch. The construction of the defensive ditches, banks, walls and gateways occurred considerably later in the latter half of the 3rd century AD, with the bastions probably added in the mid 4th century AD.
For the next 500 years the town was virtually abandoned and its walls left to decay, until they were adapted to form an Anglo-Saxon burgh in the 870s AD. After this there followed periods of neglect and repair including their bombardment by the Parliamentarians during the Civil War. Later it was proposed to demolish them completely in case they were taken by the French. Fortunately this didn't happen and their future became slightly more secure as their amenity value was recognised.
This is an invaluable study of the city walls to date, but recent investigations of potential bastion sites has demonstrated that there is still more to be learned.
Chichester can boast the most intact circuit of Roman town defences in southern England with 80% still standing in some form. However, they have had a chequered history which has been a cycle of care when there has been a threat of attack, or when their civic amenity has been recognised, and wilful neglect when the threat has gone away or better access through the walls was required.
Happily, the city walls are receiving more tender loving care today than in the past, thanks largely to the City Walls Project, created by the City Walls Partnership, a like-minded group of organisations with an interest in the walls and their care, with support from the Heritage Lottery Fund.
It was this group that commissioned Museum of London Archaeology to produce Chichester City Walls, involving a considerable amount of documentary research and the generous help of local archaeologists and archivists with long involvement in the archaeology and history of the city.
It was a revelation to read that there have now been fifty recorded archaeological interventions into the defences since the first in 1885. This was the uncovering of the foundations of one of the bastions of the South West quadrant. It seems very appropriate that the fiftieth intervention was also the uncovering of the foundations of a nearby bastion which had been revealed by geophysical survey.
The author, Andrew Westman, looks at almost two millennia of history, beginning with the positioning of the original town in relation to the road system and noting that evidence found in 2010 may indicate the existence of the original pomarium, or boundary ditch. The construction of the defensive ditches, banks, walls and gateways occurred considerably later in the latter half of the 3rd century AD, with the bastions probably added in the mid 4th century AD.
For the next 500 years the town was virtually abandoned and its walls left to decay, until they were adapted to form an Anglo-Saxon burgh in the 870s AD. After this there followed periods of neglect and repair including their bombardment by the Parliamentarians during the Civil War. Later it was proposed to demolish them completely in case they were taken by the French. Fortunately this didn't happen and their future became slightly more secure as their amenity value was recognised.
This is an invaluable study of the city walls to date, but recent investigations of potential bastion sites has demonstrated that there is still more to be learned.