London Wall (Underground remains) The London Wall is a defensive wall that encircled the City of London. The wall was built between 190 and 225 AD, it continued to be developed by the Romans until at least the end of the 4th century, making it among the last major building projects undertaken by the Romans before Britannia looked to its own defences in AD 410. Along with Hadrian’s Wall and the road network, the London Wall was one of the largest construction projects carried out in Roman Britain. Once built, the wall was 2 miles long and about 6 m high, encircling the entire Roman city. Despite Londinium being abandoned and left to ruin by the Romans, the wall remained in active use as a fortification for more than another 1,000 years. It was repaired when Anglo Saxon rule was returned to London by Afred the Great during a period of Viking sieges and raids, where he carried out building projects to rebuild crumbling defences, recut the defensive ditch (Roman fossa that encircled the walls of Londinium) and found the re-settlement of Lundenburg within the walls. The wall was further modified in the medieval period, with the addition of crenellations, gates and bastion towers. This formed part of a defensive line that incorporated The Tower of London, Baynard’s Castle and Montfichet’s Tower. Should you walk along the appropriately named London Wall road, you might notice a row of concrete blocks acting as temporary wall, and it is just underneath them that can be found one of the larger intact remains of the Roman Wall. For that vast road that cuts through the City, once part of a planned, and fortunately abandoned ring road network sits on top of another road that runs underneath it. That is in fact a subterranean car park and during its construction, more remains of the Roman Wall was uncovered. This fragment of Roman Wall is all that remains of a longer section of walling (of about 64m) which was uncovered in 1957 during clearance works for the new road and was, for the most part, subsequently demolished during the construction of the road and car park. To visit the site, head to the Museum of London and to the site of the Roman Fort Western Gatehouse. (Opposite the large bastion tower next to the Museum)
Posted on: Sun, 27 Jul 2014 21:20:45 +0000
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