Berwick-upon-Tweed Town Walls

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Coxon's Tower

Berwick's town walls are a sequence of defensive structures built around the ancient borough of Berwick-upon-Tweed in Northumberland.

History

Mediæval fortification

Berwick's town walls were built in the early 14th century under King Edward I of England, following his capture of the town from the Scots.[1] When complete they stretched two miles in length and were 3 feet 4 inches thick and up to 22 feet high, protected by a number of smaller towers, up to sixty feet tall.[2] They were funded by a murage grant in 1313, a tax on particular goods imported into the town.[3] By 1405, however, the walls had fallen into considerable disrepair and were incapable of preventing Henry IV from taking the town with relative ease.[4]

Berwick Castle (an earlier structure) lay just outside the mediæval wall to the north-west, and was connected to the town by a bridge leading to a gate in the wall.[5]

Elizabethan rebuilding

Part of the Elizabethan ramparts

An additional, short-lived, fort was built in 1552 to supplement the walls.[6] By 1560, however, it was concluded that it was impractical to upgrade the existing walls and a new set of town fortifications in an Italian style were constructed instead, destroying much of the earlier mediæval stonework.[7] Sir Richard Lee served as Chief Surveyor for these works; he came up with an innovative design, combining ditches and walls backed by substantial earthworks (designed to absorb the force of an artillery attack). The new walls were much smaller in length, enclosing only two thirds of the mediæval area, allowing them to include more artillery emplacements and five large stone bastions.[8] The 16th century walls included four gates.[9] In the 18th century most of the remaining parts of the mediæval walls were steadily lost.[10]

The walls today

The walls and ramparts today provide a fine walk around Berwick, linking and displaying the bastions and ingenious structures of the old defences, and linking too some of the sights of the town, including Berwick-upon-Tweed Barracks and the Main Guard. Some of the town's most prestigious houses stand by the ramparts too.

Today the walls are, in the view of historians Oliver Creighton and Robert Higham, "by some measure the best-preserved example of town defences in Britain designed for post-mediæval warfare".[11] They are protected as a scheduled monument and a grade I listed building.[12]

Outside links

References

  1. Creighton and Higham, p.78.
  2. Turner, p.98; Mackenzie, p.440; Forster, p.97.
  3. Turner, p.98.
  4. Mackenzie, p.440.
  5. Nikolaus Pevsner: The Buildings of England: Northumberland, 1957; 1992 Penguin Books ISBN 978-0-300-09638-5
  6. Mackenzie, p.441.
  7. Turner, p.98; Forster, p.97.
  8. Forster, pp.97-99; Creighton and Higham, p.97.
  9. Forster, p.104.
  10. Turner, p.99.
  11. Creighton and Higham, p.270.
  12. Berwick Town Wall, Gatehouse website, accessed 12 October 2011.

Books