Londinium, Architecture and the Crafts

by W. R. Lethaby

The Camomile Street and All Hallows bastions were about 20 ft. wide and projected about 16 ft. In mediæval days the bastions rose above the parapet walk on the main wall, and each formed a round-ended chamber having loopholes. This is well shown on the Survey of Holy Trinity, Aldgate, 1592, which I published about 1900 in Middlesex Notes and Queries. (Several round-fronted bastions are planned as well as Aldgate itself.) The mediæval arrangement, I have no doubt, followed the Roman scheme. The openings in the original bastions would, we may suppose, have been wider than mediæval loops, and have had semicircular arches of brick over them. (See Viollet le Duc’s Dictionary, vol. i. p. 333.) The walls and bastions which still exist at Le Mans and Senlis more closely resemble those of Londinium than any others I have seen. At Le Mans a long portion fronting, but some way back from the river Sarthe, has three bastions 60 yds. to 70 yds. apart, round on the front about 20 ft. wide, and 15 in. or 16 in. projection. The curtain is about 30 ft. high, and the bastions rise higher—say, to 45 ft.; they rise sloping for some way from the ground (Fig. [36]). The bastions at Senlis are very similar, but some of these have two storeys of large openings, three in each.

Fig. 36.

For a long time it was argued that the bastions of the Wall of London were mediæval; then very considerable difference of construction from the City Wall has been alleged. It has been said that their masonry was unlike the other, and that there were no tile bands. We only know with any certainty the lower parts of the bastions now recognised as Roman, and there is no reason for asserting that there were no tile bands in the upper parts. The bastion illustrated by Roach Smith from a sketch by Gough had bands of brick, but in the illustration this bastion appears as square, and this is unlikely (see Archæol. lxiii.). It is possible, however, that the form is a misreading of a rough sketch. This, I think, is more likely than the suggestion in V.C.H. that it was mediæval. An illustration of a round-fronted bastion near Falcon Square given by Thornbury (Old and New London), shows two bands of tile. This seems to be bastion 40 of V.C.H., which was about 40 ft. high; “in the upper part was a row of tile-brick, probably due to later patching.” There are also some other references to tiles in bastions, and on the whole I conclude that they probably had tile bands more or less like the wall. Both the bastion just mentioned and that of Gough’s sketch had openings below the upper storey, showing that in these bastions there were chambers below the level of the parapet. So there must have been at Le Mans (Fig. [36]) and Senlis. Compare also V. le Duc’s Dictionary, vol. i. p. 333.

In an article on the City Walls in the Journal of the London Society (November 1922), Dr. Norman says: “Last summer the remains of another bastion were laid bare not far from the west end of the Church of St. Anne and St. Agnes.” This was “the inner angle bastion” near Aldersgate.

It is not exactly known when the City was protected by walls. Stow says: “It seemeth not to have been walled in the year of our Lord 296, because in that year the Franks easily entered London.” He accepted the legend that “Helen, the mother of Constantine, first enwalled this City.” Camden held the same view, and has a note: “Coins of Helena often found under the walls.”

It is now agreed that the walls were built around a late and extended city, for rubbish pits and burials have been found within the walls. A belt of the former occupied the site of St. Paul’s and the Post Office. It was Roach Smith’s impression that the walls were probably built “after the recovery of the province by Constantine, or even later, when Theodosius restored the towns” (Archæol. Jour., 1844).

Mr. Lambert, from planning the find-spots of Roman coins, comes to the conclusion that the wall was not in its later position until the fourth century. The type of walling is especially characteristic of the fourth century. Haverfield has pointed out some earlier cases of the use of bonding tiles, but these seem to be exceptional. (See also what is said of Colchester in J.R.S., 1919.) Daremberg and Saglio give 309 as the date of the earliest wall of our kind in Rome. (They illustrate an example from Timgad, in North Africa, which closely resembles the wall of London.) I suggest that a point of evidence may be found in the Constantinian coin, which has a city gate or fortification for device, and the inscription PROVIDENTIAE CAESS, with the mint mark of London (Fig. [37]). This device was not invented for London, but I cannot think that at such a time it could have been adopted if Londinium still remained an open city—it would have invited too obvious irony after what had happened in 296. This coin was issued between 320 and 324, and I suggest that it may be accepted as a record of the walling of the City, or, perhaps more probably, the beginning of the works. The coins of Helen mentioned by Camden were issued about this time. In the later half of the fourth-century London acquired the title of Augusta, and this change of style probably followed on the change of status of its having then been completely walled. (I find that Mr. Reg. Smith has already made this same suggestion in V.C.H.) Sir Arthur Evans has recently called attention to a silver coin of Valentinian the Elder as having in an abbreviated form the monetary stamp of Londinensis Augusta. “A group of coins shows that the Mint at London, which had been closed since the time of Constantine, was restored by Valentinian in A.D. 368” (Proceedings, S. A., 1915, p. 105). I suggest that this is a probable date for the completion of the river wall. Several of the cities of Gaul were protected by walls at a still later time.

Fig. 37.