If Walls Could Talk

Walking around the city wall of Canterbury you might well be disappointed. However if you look closely enough you will be able to discover hidden gems of medieval history.

The walls of Canterbury were standing by c. 290 AD and reached a height of 6 metres. It was topped with crenulations and surrounded by a ditch. The medieval wall ran along the same circuit as the Roman original though some amendments were made, for example to the position of the gates.

Here at Queningate you can see an arch made from a few bricks. This was the blocked entrance for one of the seven Roman gates into the town. This entrance was in use probably until the fifteenth century.

Here at St Mary Northgate you can see how the medieval wall has been incorporated into the north wall of the twelfth-century church of St Mary’s (and then a later building). What is so special about this section of the wall is that it is meant to be one of the most substantial standing parts of a Roman wall in Britain.

The city wall is interesting not only because of these material remains but also because of what it might have represented for the medieval town dweller. It is possible to argue that at the end of the thirteenth century the wall held little function as a means of fortification, but perhaps still could have been thought of as a spiritual defence.

In Revelation St John describes his vision of the Heavenly Jerusalem. “And it had a wall great and high, having twelve gates...On the east, three gates: and on the north, three gates: and on the south, three gates: and on the west, three gates.” (Revelation 21:12-13). This sounds quite familiar, especially when it is paired with manuscript imagery such as this, from the incredibly intricate thirteenth-century Trinity Apocalypse.

Trinity College Cambridge, MS R 16.2 f. 25 v.

It is also possible that the citizens of Canterbury may have compared their town to the Earthly Jerusalem. Itinerary maps intended for pilgrimage, which date from this same period, typically depict Jerusalem as a walled city filled with the holy relics and sites of Christ’s life. It is interesting to speculate how Canterbury may have compared itself, with their cult of Becket, to this idea. Indeed in this image from Matthew Paris’ itinerary, Canterbury is shown as a walled town with the Cathedral (the location of Becket’s shrine) in pride of place.

British Library, London, Royal 14 C VII, f. 2

Ultimately then I think it is possible to think about town walls as symbols of spirituality, pilgrimage and devotion. Not that this is to devalue their use, particularly in the Anglo-Saxon period, as a deadly fortification. For Roger of Hoveden wrote in his chronicle about the siege of Canterbury in 1011, “many were thrown from the walls”.