THE WALLS, GATES, AND QUAYS
On board his bark he goes straight to London, beneath the bridge; his merchandise he there shows, his cloths of silk smoothes and opens out.—Roman de Tristan.
Walls.—The walls and gates of London are frequently mentioned incidentally by the chroniclers of the Saxon period. In the charter given by William the Conqueror to St. Martin’s le Grand, the city guarded by them is called the Burh, and the defences themselves are called Burhwealles. Their complete circuit can be accurately traced from existing remnants, old plans and records. Some years ago a fragment of the east wall of Roman date was found, which still exists a few yards east of the south-east angle of the Keep of the Tower, at a point which must be very near to the original junction with the south or river wall, which probably ran in the line of the present south wall of the inner ward of the Tower. The city wall passed north by Aldgate to the N.E. angle; then on the north by Bishopsgate and Cripplegate to the N.W. angle, and, after making an inset by Aldersgate, it formed another N.W. angle; thence it passed straight south by Ludgate to the river. It was only at the end of the thirteenth century that the south-west angle of the city was extended to take in Blackfriars. Ample evidence of Roman workmanship has been found for the whole extent of the north and east sides, but until recently some have doubted whether any remains of Roman date had been found on the west; a portion, however, was discovered between Warwick Square and Old Bailey some twenty years ago, and in 1900 other portions were found at Newgate Prison. Still earlier in 1843, as Roach Smith pointed out in Collectanea Antiqua (vol. i.), a portion of the city wall was found near Apothecaries’ Hall in Playhouse Yard. It was 10 feet thick, and the stones were bedded in mortar mixed with powdered brick. In the walls of some part of the old Blackfriars buildings found in 1900, I noticed that a considerable quantity of the small cubical Roman stones had been re-used in the Friary after the destruction of the south portion of the western wall of the city. Roach Smith pointed out that the steep fall in the ground just south of the Times office and St. Andrew’s Church showed that the river wall passed along here. There is no doubt that Alfred’s London included the whole of the Roman city with the exception of the Blackfriars extension.
Fig. 18.—Roman Wall of London.
Fig. 19.—Detail of Roman Wall of London.
The city wall seems to have been uniformly built throughout its circuit of small stones, 6 or 7 inches square on the face, bonded about every sixth course with two or three courses of large flat tiles nearly 18 inches by 12 inches, and 1½ inches thick. The core was rough rubble; it was about 8 to 10 feet thick and probably 20 to 25 feet high. FitzStephen (c. 1180) describes it as “the high and great wall of the city having seven double gates and towered to the north at intervals; it was walled and towered in like manner on the south, but the Thames has thrown down those walls.” There is evidence for a square Roman wall-tower having existed in Houndsditch, and for others, semicircular in form. It would always have had, as we know it had at a later time, a walk all round, a parapet, and battlements. A part of the late wall which still shows the walk and battlements is yet in London Wall. The turrets (of the later wall at least) were higher than the wall.
Fig. 20.—From the Common Seal. Reverse, enlarged, 1224.
According to Stow, the ditch of the city wall was begun in 1211, and the same writer, speaking of the Walbrook entering the city, as mentioned in the Conqueror’s charter, adds “before there was any ditch.” This is a mistake, for notices of Houndsditch appear before 1211, and the name is used in the Liber Trinitatis in a way that infers its existence before 1125. A few years ago an excavation at Aldersgate exposed a complete section of the ditch outside the wall. It was 14 feet deep, 35 feet wide at bottom, and 75 feet wide at the top of the sloping sides. The top of the inner slope was 10 feet from the wall. This is drawn and described in vol. lii. of ArchÆologia, and a comparison subsequently made with the ditch at Silchester showed that, like it, it was certainly of Roman work. In each there was found a raised foundation in the bed of the ditch for a trestle bridge crossing from the gate (Fig. 21).
After the ruins of the fire (of five or six years ago) at Cripplegate were cleared away, it was evident that the basements of the houses in the street running north and south outside the west end of St. Giles’s churchyard, by the angle bastion of the wall which still stands there, were built in the old ditch. A length of embanked stream which fed the ditch ran by the east of Finsbury Circus.[75] It is shown in the so-called Aggas plan.
Fig. 21.—Section of Roman Wall and Ditch.
Many considerations suggest the likelihood that the first Roman walled city was smaller in extent than it became at a later time. Roach Smith thought that this earlier city was confined to the east side of the Walbrook, the approach from London Bridge forming its centre. The great wall, according to him, was “probably a work of the later days of the Romano-British period.” With this view J. R. Green agrees, and argues that the wall was built in haste under Theodosius, when the attacks of Picts and Saxons made walls necessary for the security of British towns.[76] Henry of Huntingdon, writing early in the twelfth century, tells us that “tradition says that Helen, the illustrious daughter of Britain, surrounded London with the wall which is still standing.”
Gates.—Opposite the entrance to the city by the bridge was the North Gate, called Bishopsgate. According to Geoffrey of Monmouth, CÆsar’s sword “Yellow Death” was buried here with a Briton who had been slain by it. This legend is at least enough to show that the gate was ancient at the beginning of the twelfth century. Bishopsgate is mentioned in Domesday: “The canons of St. Paul’s have ad portam episcopi ten cottages as in the time of King Edward.” Outside the gate the Erming Street stretched away to the north over the moor.
The East Gate—Aldgate (generally written Algate or Alegate)—is mentioned in the foundation charters of Holy Trinity Priory in 1108. Stow says he found it named in a charter given by King Edgar to the Cnihten Gild, but it seems that he founded this on a later legend which professed to recite the terms of such a charter. However, the Saxon Chronicle, giving an account of the dispute between the Confessor and Godwine in 1052, says that some of the Earl’s party gewendon ut Æt Æst geate and got them to Eldulfsness (Walton-on-the-Naze). Mr. W. H. Stevenson, in an interesting note on personal names associated with town gates, cites an eleventh-century life of St. Edmund, in which it is called Ealsegate, and suggests that it may be named from one Ealh; the East Gate of Gloucester was called Ailesgate from Æthel.[77] A survey of Holy Trinity precinct made about 1592, and now at Hatfield, gives the plan of the gate as it then existed (possibly in part Roman), and a length of the city wall with its semicircular bastions.[78] Outside this gate the great Roman road reached away to Chelmsford and Colchester.
The principal West Gate is clearly Newgate, as standing opposite the East Gate and at the end of Cheap. Fabyan calls it West Gate. In the Pipe Roll for 1188 it is called Newgate, and it was then already a prison. Earlier in the twelfth century it seems to have been called Chamberlain’s Gate,[79] and this name is probably explained by an entry in Domesday, where it is noted that two cottagers at Holeburn were dependent on the sheriff of Middlesex in the time of the Confessor, and that William the Chamberlain rendered six shillings for his vineyard [there] to the King’s sheriff. That is, the Chamberlain held property outside Newgate in 1086, and the name Chamberlain’s Gate probably goes back as far. An eleventh-century text of a charter dated 889[80] describes a property, “Ceolmundingehaga, not far from Westgetum.” Possibly Coleman Street is named after the same citizen, who may be none other than the Ealdorman of Kent who died in 897. Outside this gate the Roman road ran west, as we have seen, to the Tyburn, beyond which it crossed the Watling Street.
Fig. 22.—From Matthew Paris, 1236.
Ludgate must have been reputed to be very ancient when Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote, early in the twelfth century. He speaks of it as “the gate which to this day is called in the British tongue Porth-Lud and in the Saxon Ludesgata.” On it had been “a brazen man,” said to be Cadwaladr. Dr. Rhys thinks that Geoffrey was here using ancient tradition. There is no conclusive reason why the gate should not have preserved a British name and a Roman statue, and at least the legend has a legend’s worth. The next earliest mention I find of it is in the St. Paul’s documents, about the middle of the twelfth century.[81] Ludgate Street without the gate is spoken of not long after. A reference cited by Fabyan, however, probably takes us back to the days of the Conquest (see below, p. 112). The Strand, leading from Westminster past St. Clement Danes to Ludgate, must be an ancient street: it may indeed represent the earliest of all paths to London from the passage of the river by the great Watling Street. St. Clement’s Church, as we shall see, is pre-Conquest; Sir H. Ellis, in his introduction to Domesday, says a charter by the Conqueror refers to St. Clement Danes “in the Strand,” but the actual words are not cited (vol. ii. p. 143). A street outside the western walls—“Aldwych”—is frequently mentioned from the twelfth century; it is represented by Wych Street and by Drury Lane; it turned north-west from the Strand and joined the great western highway at St. Giles, where a hospital came to be built in the Middle Ages. Lambard says Ludgate meant, in Saxon, a postern, and this meaning is found in the A.S. dictionaries. Mr. W. H. Stevenson has lately again suggested that this gate is called from a Ludd or Ludda, like Billingsgate from Billing, but on all the evidence we must conclude that the Saxon word for postern must hold the field, especially as the opposite gate in the east wall was called the Postern up to Stow’s time.
Fig. 23.—The Common Seal of London, 1224.
Ealdredesgate and Cripelegate are both named about the year 1000 in Ethelred’s Laws (Thorpe). The first is evidently called after one Ealdred. As we have seen above, in p. 79, an excavation outside Aldersgate exposed a section of the old Roman ditch, and gave evidence of a trestle bridge which crossed it from the ancient gate, which consequently must itself have been Roman.[82] Stow says that Cripplesgate is mentioned in a life of St. Edmund, which tells that the Saint’s body was brought through this gate about 1010; but see Aldgate above. It is named the postern of Cripplesgata in the Conqueror’s charter to St. Martin’s. In a slightly later charter it is called Porta Contractorum (Stow).[83] These six, with the South or Bridge Gate, make up the seven historic gates of London, and the conclusion cannot be resisted that they all date back at least to the time when Alfred repaired the walls of the city, and most, if not all of them, to Roman days. Roach Smith held that the principal gates were then Ludgate, Aldgate, and Bishopsgate. Referring to the finding of inscribed stones near to Ludgate, he says that they doubtless belonged to a cemetery which stood outside the gate. Hatton says that some Roman coins were found at Aldgate on its destruction in 1606. Price says that no evidence of the ancient wall having crossed Bishopsgate Street was found when a deep sewer was carried along the street, and hence we may infer a Roman opening in the wall at this point. Direct evidence has been found of Aldersgate, as just said, and Newgate is implied by the evidence of the Roman road found by Wren at St. Mary le Bow. FitzStephen says the city gates were double, and a rough drawing of the city in the MS. Matthew of Paris represents each gate as having two arches (Fig. 22). Stow also says that Aldgate was double. The Roman gates at Chesters and other important posts on Hadrian’s Wall have coupled openings between towers containing guard chambers; the great West Gate at Silchester was similar,[84] and we may take this gate as a type for Roman London.
We may thus form a very clear idea of what London must have looked like when the Norman Conqueror came and viewed the city walls from the other side of the river, as described by Guy of Amiens.
The assertions and contradictions in recent books, and maps founded on them,[85] are difficult to follow. According to Mr. Loftie, the north road from Bishopsgate “joined the road to Colchester and Lincoln afterwards called Erming Street” (Erming Street to Colchester); “We find both Watling and the Erming Streets going off at a tangent when they have passed out” (on plan both shown perfectly straight);[86] “Aldgate—properly Algate—was opened about the beginning of Henry’s [I.] reign”; “Aldgate has nothing to do with ‘Old’ or Eald, for the simple reason that the eastern road ran not from Aldgate but from Bishopsgate, and not to Stratford but to Old Ford”; “Whitechapel Road—the Vicenal Way ... answered to the street of tombs without the gate at Pompeii” (in the plan a road going east from Bishopsgate is named Vicenal Way). It is impossible to say what such roads were, or where they went, or how the author knew. In the other plans mentioned above, London Bridge is shown near Billingsgate, with the north and south street east of St. Magnus and the north gate much to the east of Bishopsgate. Watling Street is shown on a diagonal line from Bridge end to Newgate, and Leadenhall Street and Aldgate are omitted.
Quays.—FitzStephen, as we have seen, says that London “was walled and towered” to the south against the river. And there cannot be a doubt that the citizens were protected in this way, when we read that they shut themselves within their walls against the Danes, for land walls alone would little have availed against the water-borne hordes. Stow, Wren, and other authorities have accepted these river walls, and indeed analogy with other water-side towns calls for them. It is evident on referring to a map that Thames Street, Upper and Lower (above Bridge and below), must follow the course of this wall, and that the street was outside the wall, forming a “strand” giving access to the quays, as does the way along the Golden Horn at Constantinople. When in 1863 Thames Street was excavated, the Roman level appeared at 20 to 25 feet below the modern surface; the whole was found to have been piled and cross-timbered right across the street; this “doubtless formed the old water line and embankment fronting the south portion of Roman London.” The piling turned up the course of the Walbrook towards Cannon Street.[87] Similar embankments were found when the approach to new London Bridge was made, and still further east; it is said as many as five lines were found when the present Custom House was built. Roach Smith describes the foundations of a part of the river wall which was found extending from Lambeth Hill to Queenhythe, and again by Queen Street, along the north side of the street.[88] And we have seen that the south-east and south-west angles of the wall were just on this line. Several quay basins were formed along the river shore outside the wall. The most famous of these was Billingsgate, which in the traditions of Geoffrey of Monmouth took its name from Belinus, the British Apollo. In the Laws of Ethelred (979-1015)[89] there is an item “concerning the Tolls given at Bilingesgate.” It is probably the Lundentuneshythe named in a charter of 749[90] and the Roman Wharf of London.
Fig. 24.—Fragment found
in the South Wall.
The next most important quay is Queenhythe, otherwise, as Stow says, “called Edredshithe because it at first belonged to one called Edred.” This is confirmed by the name of the Church of St. Michael “Ædredeshuda” found about 1148 in the St. Paul’s documents; about 1220 it appears as St. Michael’s de Hutha Regina in the same. The queen who gave her name to this quay was Matilda, wife of Stephen; in the Cotton Charters (xvi. 35) is a grant from her of the hospital by the Tower and rents from Edredshythe to Holy Trinity Aldgate. In the Close Rolls of 21 Henry III. (1237) are two entries in regard to the Necessary House formerly built by Matilda, late Queen, at Queenhythe for the common use of the city; it was to be made as long as the quay of Alan Balun, so that it might have a free course of water. Dugdale cites a grant (temp. Henry II.) of a rent-charge on Ripa ReginÆ called “Aldershithe” [?] to St. Giles. In 1247 the wharf was granted to the city at a farm of £50 a year.[91] From a charter of King Alfred himself, dated 899, we find that the Edred who gave his name to this wharf was none other than Ethered, Alfred’s son-in-law and his lieutenant in London (died 912).[92] In a second version of the charter given in Birch’s collection it is called Rethereshythe, but the Peterborough Chronicle again names it correctly and gives the further interesting fact that Harold held land near this quay: “Comes Harold dedit terram in London juxta monaster. S. Pauli juxta Portum qui vocatur Etheredishithe”.[93] In a survey of the quays and approaches given in the Liber Custumarum a Retheresgate appears, and in a will of 1279 Retheresgate and the lane of St. Margaret near it are mentioned. The lane was later Rethers Lane and then Pudding Lane. I cannot explain the confusion as to the two sites and names. Edredshythe was walled, and the public way leading to it is mentioned. It is of great interest that its actual basin yet remains to us. If the city were not given over to all the horrors of “riches,” we might hope to see a statue of the great king erected at this quay. It is of romantic interest that we can associate with this site the names of the husband of Alfred’s daughter Ethelfleda, Lady of Mercia and of London, and Harold, last of the English.
Fig. 25.—Fragment found in South Wall.
Botolph’s Wharf.—According to Stow, the Conqueror confirmed to Westminster Abbey “the gift which Almundus of the port of St. Botolph gave ... with the house and one wharf which is at the head of London Bridge ... as King Edward granted.”
Dowgate.—In a charter of 1150-51 which Henry II. as Duke of the Normans gave to the citizens of Rouen, he grants that the men of Rouen who are free of the Merchants’ Gild shall be quit of all dues save for wine and craspisce. “And the citizens of Rouen shall have at London the port of Douuegate as they have had from the time of King Edward.” After warning other ships off the wharf, they were free to cut them adrift.[94] “Here then we have evidence that even before the Conquest the citizens of Rouen had a haven at the mouth of the Walbrook.”[95] A chapter in the Laws of Æthelred names the traders who were free to come to the Port of London, and amongst these appear men of Flanders, France, and the Emperor’s men. The men of Rouen, then, as in 1150, brought wine and craspisce (dried sturgeon or whale). From the fact that the Walbrook issued here, Dowgate has been derived from the Celtic Dwr, water; this would be a very interesting fact, if there were any certainty in it.
Steelyard and the Vintry Wharf.—In the privileges of the Emperor’s men just mentioned we seem to have, as Dr. Sharpe suggests,[96] the beginnings of the Gilda Teutonicorum, the great mediÆval Hanse by Baynard’s Castle called at a late time the Steelyard. In the time of Henry II. the House of the Cologne Merchants in London is mentioned, and Richard I., when passing through Cologne, remitted the rent-charge on their Gildhall.[97] This privilege was confirmed by John in 1213.[98]
We can probably trace the port of “the Flanders men” of Æthelred’s laws in a charter granted by the Conqueror to the Abbey of St. Peter’s, Ghent, in 1081, granting Lewisham, Woolwich, etc.: and within London, the land which King Edward [the Confessor] gave, namely, a portion of Waremanni-Acra with the wharf belonging to it, with its market rights, stalls, shops, and dues, and that all merchants who have landed in the Soke of St. Peter [of Ghent in London] shall return and enjoy his protection. This charter is witnessed amongst others by Deorman, Leofstan, and Alward grossus of London.[99] In a later confirmation of 1103-09 the ground is called Wermanacre, and this name must be preserved in St. Martin’s “de Beremanescherche” (date 1257);[100] for Stow says St. Martin in the Vintry was sometimes called “St. Martin de Beremund Church.” Kemble gives a copy of the original charter of the Confessor, granting to St. Peter of Ghent the above-named places, also within London the land which anglice is called Wermanecher, with the wharf and all rights and customs. Mr. Round shows from other documents that the Confessor visited St. Peter’s, Ghent, in 1016, and then promised to restore to the monks their possessions in England, and that Lewisham, etc., had first been given to the monastery as early as 918. The gift was confirmed by Edgar, with its “churches, land, and crops,” at the prayer of Dunstan, who ruled St. Peter’s for some time when exiled from England.Fish hythe, in the western part of London, is named in the Saxon charter 718 of Kemble’s collection. Riley, in his introduction to the Liber Custumarum, which contains a valuable mediÆval survey of the wharves, puts Fish hythe near the bottom of Bread Street. Ebbegate, which is mentioned in twelfth-century documents, is, Riley says, the same as Swan Wharf.[101]
There must, even in Alfred’s time, have been some sort of customs house, for there were quay dues, and a charter of 857 speaks of the place in London where the weighing and measuring of the port was done.[102]
We thus have a picture of a busy river front, the shore, backed by the city walls and gates, indented with a series of docks crowded with shipping. Says FitzStephen, “To this city from every nation under heaven merchants delight to bring their trade by sea. The Arabian sends gold, ... Gaul her wines.” And Robert of Gloucester, characterising the fame of several towns, says, “London for ships most.” Camden likens the docks to a floating forest.
The principal trade of the port seems to have been in slaves. A law of c. 685 relates to the buying of chattels in London-wic, and the traffic is frequently mentioned. Fifty years after the Conquest it was unsafe to go near the ships in Bristol harbour for fear of being kidnapped, as was young Tristram in the story. Gildas, looking back to the commerce of the Roman period, likened the noble rivers Thames and Severn to two arms by which foreign luxuries were of old brought in. In our period a multitude of craft must have filled these basins and lined the river bank—dromonds from the Mediterranean, “long ships and round ships” from the north, and slavers from Rouen and Dublin, with many a splendid war “dragon” like Olaf Tryggvison’s—“Foreward on it was a dragon’s head, but afterwards a crook fashioned in the end as the tail of a dragon; but either side of the neck and all the stem were overlaid with gold. That ship the King called the Worm, because when the sail was aloft then should that be as the wings of the dragon.” The ships of Cnut’s English fleet were “wondrously big; he himself had that dragon which was so mickle that it told up sixty benches, and on it were heads gold bedight, but the sails were banded of blue and red and green.”[103] There were also pilgrim ships, for we hear that Offa “purchased a piece of land in Flanders in order to build a house where the English pilgrims on landing might find refreshment.”[104] According to the legend St. Ursula and her virgins embarked at London.
Of Alfred we are told that he built ships to fight the Danish ashes, “full twice as large as they, some with sixty oars, some with more.” Only last year (1900) a clinker-built boat, thought to be Danish, was found on the Lea, 50 feet long and 9 feet beam. It must have been a wonderful sight when the English fleet assembled at London, as in 992, or when a great host of Northmen sailed up on the tide.
Think that below bridge the green lapping waves
Smite some few keels that bear Levantine staves,
Cut from the yew wood on the burnt-up Hill,
And pointed jars that Greek hands toiled to fill,
And treasured scanty spice from some far sea,
Florence gold-cloth, and Ypres napery,
And cloth of Bruges, and hogsheads of Guienne.
