Not far from the Tower of London, to the east of the Tower Hill, stands one of the best surviving sections of London’s city walls, still preserved up to a height of about 10 metres. The lowest courses of this part of the wall, up to about 4 m, is the original Roman Landward Wall with later medieval additions above. Londinium’s Roman Landward Wall, built between A.D. 190 and 225, encircled the town at its largest limit at the time and would have originally stood at c. 6 metres high. The construction of a free–standing stone wall was a significant occasion in Londinium’s history. It is remarkable for the quantity of masonry used and for the continuing additions to the defences over at least three identifiable phases.

The construction of urban defences was one of the hallmarks of the late Roman Empire. City walls represented the most significant construction projects of their period, and they dramatically redefined the urban landscape. To date, very few studies have examined the labour required to complete such architectural projects. What amount of labour was required to produce the material and then put it into place? What scale of transport was required to move these materials from the place of extraction or production to the building site? Here, in a major new study, Barker, Hayward and Coombe combine their interests and specialisms in Romano-British archaeology, architecture, and building materials to examine the construction of Londinium’s Landward walls. They investigate the sources of the materials used, their transport, and the scale of labour and investment involved in the construction of the Landward Wall using an energetics–based methodology.

Since the local geology in the London Basin does not offer suitable building stone, Londinium’s walls offer an exceptional opportunity to examine the logistics of construction and the transportation of building materials – the majority of materials were sourced about 130 km from London, while other materials travelled over 400 km. The construction material—nearly 35,000 m3 in total, comprising 85,000 tonnes of Kentish and over 420,000 bricks for bonding courses—required an estimated total labour of just over 303,000 person–days, with the authors concluding that the construction of Londinium’s stone defences “represented one of the largest Roman building projects in the north-western provinces”.

Concluding, the authors situate the construction of the Landward Wall within the context of wider questions of capital investment and labour organization in order to provide new insights into Londinium’s Roman Landward Wall and the socio–economic and practical implications of its construction. The provincial capital was clearly up to the “logistical demands it imposed on Londinium’s supply networks” and a powerful demonstration of “the capabilities of the local administrators to source and transport materials over both land and water networks”.

The article ‘Londinium’s Landward Wall: Material acquisition, supply and construction’ is out now FirstView in Cambridge journal Britannia. It is currently free to read for a short time.

Image credit: Surviving section of the Landward Wall by Tower Hill showing the variety and durability of material types, particularly the bonding or lacing courses of Lydion brick and hard angular Kentish ragstone blocks. The Roman remains constitute the first c. 4.5 m of the height of the wall, with the rest being medieval. Photo: K. Hayward.

Bio: Penny Coombe