Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire

by W. F. Rawnsley

CHAPTER XI
LINCOLN.—THE CITY

The City—The Corporation—The City Swords—Tennyson’s Centenary and Statue—Queen Eleanor’s Cross—Brayford Pool—Afternoon Tea.

THE MINSTER YARD

The rate at which the soil of inhabited places rises from the various layers of debris which accumulate on the surface is well shown at Lincoln. In Egypt, where houses are built of mud, every few years an old building falls and the material is trodden down and a new erection made upon it. Hence the entrance to the temple at Esneh from the present outside floor level, is up among the capitals of the tall pillars; and, the temple being cleaned out, the floor of it and the bases of its columns were found to be nearly thirty feet below ground. Stone-built houses last much longer, but when a fire or demolition after a siege has taken place three or four times, a good deal of rubbish is left spread over the surface and it accumulates with the ages. Hence, in Roman Lincoln or “Lindum Colonia” pavements may be found whenever the soil is moved, at a depth of seven or eight feet at least, and often more. Thus the Roman West Gate came to light in 1836, after centuries of complete burial, but soon crumbled away; and the whole of the hill top where Britons, Romans, Danes, and Normans successively dwelt, is full of remains which can only on rare occasions ever have a chance of seeing the light. Still there is much for us to see above ground, so we may as well take a walk through the city, beginning at the top of the hill. Here, as you leave the west end of the cathedral and pass through the “Exchequer Gate” with its one large and two small arches, under the latter of which may be seen entrances to the little shopstalls where relics, rosaries, etc., were once sold, you pass along the flat south wall of St. Mary Magdalen’s Church, beyond which the outer Exchequer Gate stood till 1800. The wall in which this and other gates of the cathedral close were inserted was built in the thirteenth or early fourteenth century, to protect the close and the canons. The gateways were all double, except the “Potter Gate,” which is the only other one now extant. It is said that the Romans had a pottery near it; at present the road to the Minster Yard goes both through it and round one side of it.

The Pottergate, Lincoln.

THE CASTLE

Passing from the Exchequer Gate you see a very pretty sixteenth century timbered house, with projecting story, at the corner of Bailgate, now used as a bank. Hard by on your right is the White Hart inn, and on your left you have a peep down Steep Street to the House of Aaron the Jew, a money lender of the reign of Henry II. Near this was once the South Gate of the Roman city, and some of the stones are still visible in the pavement. The gate was destroyed in 1775. Looking straight ahead from the Exchequer Gate you see the east gateway of the castle, a Norman arch with later semi-circular turrets corbelled out on either side of it. Inside is a fine oriel window, brought from John of Gaunt’s house below the hill. The enclosure is an irregular square of old British earthworks, seven acres in extent. The west gate is walled up and the Assize Court within the castle enclosure is near it. In the angles on either side of the east gate are two towers in the curtain wall, one, “the observatory tower,” crowns an ancient mound, and on the south side is a larger mound, forty feet high, on which is the keep, a very good specimen of very early work, in shape an irregular polygon. The castle was one of the eight founded by the Conqueror himself, apparently never so massive a building as his castle, which is now being excavated at Old Sarum, the walls of which, built of the flints of the locality, are twelve feet thick and faced with stone. At Lincoln the Roman walls were ten to twelve feet thick and twenty feet high. Massive fragments of this wall still exist in different places, the biggest being near the Newport Arch. Near here too is “The Mint Wall,” seventy feet long by thirty feet high, and three and a half feet thick, which probably formed the north wall of the Basilica. Most of the fighting in Lincoln used to take place around this spot, as Stephen felt to his cost. The old West Gate of the Roman city was found just to the north of the castle west gate. The line which joined the Roman East and West Gates ran straight then, and crossed the Ermine Street, now called here the Bailgate, near the church of St. Paulinus, but the result of some destructive assaults must have so filled the road that the street now called ‘East Gate’ was deflected from its course southwards and has to make a sharp bend to get back to its proper line.