guided tour of Colchester’s Roman town wall

On Saturday (7th May), Trust director Philip led a guided tour of Colchester’s famous Roman town wall. This was one of the annual series of Jane’s Walks: these are free and take place all over the world, during the first week in May. This year there were 15 walks in Colchester. Philip was actually standing in for another tour, titled ‘Wartime Colchester – but which war?’. Philip started his tour at the Castle Methodist Church in Maidenburgh Street: he explained that the tour would be of the wall or walls and not the war or wars, as advertised – at that point, apparently, at least one member of the public left the group! Philip estimates that there were 30 people in his group at the beginning of the walk, but there seemed to be far fewer at the end… This is probably because the walk lasted two hours, as Philip mercilessly led his group around the whole circuit of the town wall, including lengths of the wall which are now hidden behind buildings. The complete wall was 2,844 metres long (about one and three-quarter miles).

We know quite a lot about the town wall, from archaeological projects, recording and surveys which the Trust has conducted on the wall, and from Philip’s own research. He suggests that the wall was built in about AD 70 to 85, which would make it the first Roman town wall to be built in Britain. Philip says that it is difficult to understand the town wall as a structure, on the ground, as so much of it has been demolished.
From a blog post on this web-site, posted 16th December 2015, at www.thecolchesterarchaeologist.co.uk/?p=23440 :
‘… Colchester’s town wall was built as a defensive structure around the existing Roman town just a few years after the Boudican revolt of AD 61, when native Britons rebelled against the Roman occupation of Britain: they burned the major Roman towns of London, St Albans and Colchester to the ground and massacred their inhabitants. Colchester’s town wall was a massive structure and, even in its ruined state, it represents a great achievement of Roman engineering in its hilltop position. The wall originally included defensive towers, gateways and drain culverts as well as an external defensive ditch and, later, an internal earthen rampart. The town wall has suffered a great deal of damage and depletion over the centuries. It is still a remarkable structure …’.

It is possible to walk round the town wall and see elements which show its whole history in ten parts: these were also the main points of Philip’s tour (given here in chronological and not in walking order).
* the Roman defensive wall – the best-preserved length of the wall lies to the north of the Balkerne Gate, on Balkerne Hill (both the internal and external faces of the wall): here you can even see evidence of the wall’s construction, when gangs of Roman builders worked on different lengths of the wall
* the remains of two Roman defensive towers (at the sites of the East Gate in East Street and the North Gate on North Hill)
* a Roman drain near Duncan’s Gate in Castle Park and two Roman culverts, one in Vineyard Street and one at the top of East Hill
* the later Roman Balkerne Gate: only one pedestrian gateway and its flanking guardroom now survive
* the remains of the late 3rd- to 4th-century defensive external ditch at the north-east corner of the wall
* the remains of the later internal earthen rampart of the town wall, beside the Mercury Theatre
* the remains of three medieval bastions, two in Priory Street and one in Vineyard Street
* medieval rebuilding and re-use, ie the remains of the medieval rebuilding of North Gate on North Hill
* post-medieval re-use, ie the pedestrian gateway of St Mary’s Steps; evidence of domestic re-use of the wall; the wall functioning as a boundary wall to the back gardens of houses in Roman Road
* phases of demolition and the robbing of materials over the centuries, eg on Balkerne Hill

The Balkerne Gate, perhaps the highlight of the town wall, is soon to be illuminated and it will be the first monument in Colchester to be illuminated. The Friends of Colchester Roman wall installed five interpretation boards around the town wall in 2015 and they plan to install another ten: see their plan of the town wall and the interpretation boards at www.romanwall.org/?page_id=272 .

An item about the Colchester walks was posted on the Daily Gazette web-site on the 5th May: it includes a photo. of Philip, details of his walk and what he said about the town wall ahead of the walk, at www.gazette-news.co.uk/news/14470047.Jane_s_Walks_returns . Visit the Jane’s Walk web-site at www.janejacobswalk.org/ and the Colchester Jane’s Walk web-page at http://janeswalk.org/united-kingdom/colchester/ .

The images show a length of the Roman town wall, near the Balkerne Gate (image from the Colchester historic buildings forum web-site); a plan of the town wall; and Philip’s guided tour on Saturday. [Images to follow.]

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