In 2023 London got a brand new free museum. It is all about the old city wall and is based around a genuine section of the old Roman city wall. So, I went to check it out.
Despite being called ‘The City Wall At Vine Street’, the entrance can be found at 12 Jewry Street.
The Wall
In the years following the Roman invasion of 43AD, they established the city of Londinium. To protect and demarcate their new trading post, they likely erected a wooden palisade around the border.
In around 200AD they replaced this with a sturdy stone wall as a boundary, a defensive measure but also as a status symbol and a way of extracting tolls from people coming into the city by forcing them through gates.
It was faced in Kentish ragstone, filled with rubble and concrete and was one of the largest construction projects in Roman Britain.
A ditch ran around the outside and it had five gates initially: Ludgate, Newgate, Cripplegate, Bishopsgate and Aldgate.
Aldersgate was added in around 350AD and Moorgate in the 15th century.
The wall went on to more or less define the shape of London until the late 16th and early 17th century, when it burst its traditional boundaries. It was then incorporated into the urban fabric of the city, absorbed into buildings and often knocked down in parts. The gates were demolished in the 1760s and 1770s to ease congestion on the roads.
The Museum: The Wall
The museum has been set up around a section of wall, today in the basement of a student accommodation building. Many of the surviving sections of the wall are below the modern street level as the ground level has risen and levelled over the last 2000 years. The building was finished in 2023 and the new museum opened to the public.
You can see evidence of where the original Roman wall has been added to, enhanced and reinforced over the centuries. The Roman bits can be identified with the rows of terracotta tiles/
There are a few theories behind why they included these: to keep the wall level in construction, to add stability to the wall, to stop damp rising or possibly a combination of all three.
You can also see the base of what was once a tower or bastion.
The bastion was added to the wall between 351-375AD along with many others, to fortify the wall in response to Saxon raiders.
After the wall was defunct as a defensive measure and the city expanded outside it, this particular section became a party wall between two houses, two warehouses and then two offices. In 1905 an office block was constructed around it called Roman Wall House, preserving the wall in the basement.
When the building was pulled down for the construction of the Urbanest student accommodation, the wall was protected by a wooden structure and monitored for movement throughout the project.
The Artefacts
There are also various artefacts on display that were discovered during excavations in the area.
They are largely from the ditch that ran around the outside of the wall, used as a convenient rubbish dump for Londoners throughout the centuries. The ditch therefore today offers a treasure trove of archaeology.
It is organised by time period, starting with Roman pottery and coins and heading up through the years.
Below is a section of Roman pottery with a cat’s pawprint on it.
The Romans brought cats with them to Britain, but there is evidence of pet cats in the country before this.
These are imported Bartmann jugs, from Germany, dating from the 17th century.
They all depict a bearded man and were probably used to store beer and wine.
Below is a stoolpan; essentially an 18th century toilet.
It could be slotted into a round hole in a stool or commode.
This is the skeleton of what is thought to have been a pet rabbit from the 1760s.
There are not signs of slaughter or skinning, hence why they think it was possibly a pet rather than for food.
The most interesting item is this tombstone from the Eastern mediterranean.
It dates from around 200BC and the inscription tells us that it depicts a doctor called Tiberios Claudios Aphrodisios and his mother Demetria.
How it got here is unknown but it was probably brought over in the 18th century when Grand Tours of Europe, particularly Italy and Greece, were popular amongst the upper classes of Britain. They often brought back antiquities and artefacts as mementoes of their journey. It was discovered during the excavations amid the post-war reconstruction of the area.
How To Visit
The museum is absolutely worth a visit. As well as the above there is also video about the construction and usage of the wall.
The museum is open Monday-Sunday 9am-6pm. You book a free slot on their website.
They have a little cafe as well.
Thank you for reading! More of London’s incredible history below…
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A weekly treat and should this simple village boy ever pick up the courage to visit the wicked city, where I am warned that harm can come to a young man ( if he is luckly) I will certainly try and bring my best Smock and join a tour. Unlikely as my riding mare is now lame and could not survive the journey
So the wall was erected in part to extract cash from people entering the city. In effect an early form of congestion charge! Nothing new under the sun.
I wonder if the mortar the Romans used in Londinium matched the strength and quality of the European variety…which is unparalleled and puts our own crumbling mortar to shame? Was it all down to some accidental anomaly in the available european material, or a fully thought-out recipe?
Just wondering.
Those clay tiles add an agreeable aesthetic, too.
Great post