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Excavations at Lincoln 1970–1972: The Western Defences of the Lower Town: An Interim Report

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 November 2011

Christina Colyer
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Extract

During 1970–2 three sites on the western defences of the lower Roman and medieval town were examined. The earliest defences, which consisted of a rampart fronted by a stone wall 5 feet (1·5 m.) wide, and a ditch-system, were built in the late second or early third century. At some later date, interval-towers were added to the back of the wall: that at The Park was replaced by a new gateway which was rebuilt in the later fourth century. There was slight evidence that the other gate presumed to lie on the west side of the lower town at West Parade was rebuilt at the same time. North of this, on Mother by Hill, the third-century interval-tower was partially demolished in the fourth century and replaced by an internal platform. There was contemporary thickening or rebuilding of the wall at various other points, including either side of the gate at The Park. At some time in the late Roman period a new wider ditch was dug.

The Roman defences continued substantially in use throughout the medieval period, although the gateway at The Park was no longer functioning. In the thirteenth century the line of the western defences was extended southwards to the Brayford Pool, terminating in the circular Lucy Tower. North of the tower, the new defences comprised a stone wall 7 feet (2·1 m.) wide and a ditch whose size could not be determined.

The excavations also revealed interesting but fragmentary information about occupation within the defences. There were Roman buildings as far south as The Park from the Flavian period.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Antiquaries Journal , Volume 55 , Issue 2 , September 1975 , pp. 227 - 266
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1975

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References

Page 227 note 1 For the work of the Lincoln Archaeological Research Committee, compare the state of knowledge of Roman Lincoln in Richmond, I. A., Arch. Journ. ciii (1946), 26Google Scholar ff., with that in Whitwell, J. B., Roman Lincolnshire (1970), pp. 17Google Scholar ff.

Page 227 note 2 C.B.A. Research Report, The Erosion of History (ed. C. M. Heighway, 1971), where a map of the developments proposed for Lincoln figures on the front cover.

Page 227 note 3 For medieval Lincoln, see Hill, Sir Francis, Medieval Lincoln (1948Google Scholar, reprinted 1965).

Page 227 note 4 It is hoped that final reports will appear as monographs in fascicule form,

Page 230 note 1 J.R.S. lix (1969), 214; Whitwell, op. cit., pp. 36, 135.

Page 231 note 1 Richmond, op. cit., 40 f.

Page 231 note 2 The only previous work carried out on the western defences of the lower city was undertaken in 1948–50 by Baker, F. T.: J.R.S. xl (1950), 99Google Scholar.

Page 231 note 3 Thomas Sympson c. 1740 in Lindum: an addition to Adversaria, p. 579 (6). He refers to the conversion of the ditch from a rubbish pit to a garden and adds of the wall: ‘On the other side Newland Gate it lyes buried under a fine airy walk, made upon it lately for the recreation of the citizens; and the ditch, which was many years a common laystall, is now much better employed as a garden.’ Quoted by Richmond, op. cit., 40.

Page 232 note 1 A gate a little further north at West Parade has been postulated; Richmond, op. cit., 42; Thompson, F. H. and Whitwell, J. B., ‘The Gates of Roman Lincoln’, Archaeologia, civ (1973), 130Google Scholar.

Page 232 note 2 The first stone wall around the extended city is referred to throughout as the colonia wall.

Page 234 note 1 Laboratory analysis of the constituents used in the mortars may confirm this.

Page 234 note 2 Cf. Jarrett, M. G. and Frere, S. S. in Antiquity, xxxix (1965), 57CrossRefGoogle Scholar ff. and 137 ff. The evidence for the sequence of defences found on the eastern side of the lower town at Silver St. by Mr. J. S. Wacher in 1973 (followed by S. S. Frere in Britannia (2nd edn., 1974), p. 288) was not apparent on the western side where a large area was excavated and the rampart stood to a great height. This interpretation rests on the evidence of one trench, and other interpretations are possible.

Page 235 note 1 A large quantity of datable material was recovered, some associated with the buildings sealed by the rampart and therefore likely to produce a more reliable terminus post quern than material in the rampart. Most of the pottery has a terminal date of the second century, but three sherds of samian, two of form Dr. 31 and one sherd of form Dr. 37 may be East Gaulish, which could put the first phase of defences around the lower town into the beginning of the third century (cf. West Parade, p. 248). I am grateful to Mr. B. R. Hartley, F.S.A., Mrs. Joanna Bird, and Miss Brenda Dickinson for their identification of the samian, and Mrs. K. F. Hartley for her report on mortaria.

Page 238 note 1 Tie Willson Collection, (Soc. Antiq. MS. 786), vol. D, pp. 22, 23. I am indebted to Mr. F. H. Thompson for drawing my attention to this material.

Page 238 note 2 A study has recently been made of the other known gates of Roman Lincoln; Thompson and Whitwell, op. cit., 129 ff.

Page 240 note 1 Two smaller but similar fragments of decorated cornice, now in Lincoln City and County Museum, were found in 1968 in the region of the south tower. The cornice fragment referred to in the text has been replaced by a cast; the original is displayed in the entrance to the municipal offices. Architectural fragments including pilaster mouldings like those found in the north gate-tower were drawn by Willson (above p. 238, n. 1). The tombstone of Volusia Faustina (R.I.B. 2 50) came from this site, as did that of Quintus Valerius Victorinus (R.I.B. 2 59). I am indebted to the late Prof. D. E. Strong, who visited the site several times and discussed the architectural fragments with me. He pointed out that all the reused material at The Park could have been sepulchral in origin, but that some could also have been reused from a classical temple.

Page 241 note 1 Victoriae DD Auggq NN, probably HK 137, A.D. 345–8; and several Constantinopolis types, A.D. 330–5, HK 52, including imitations: Carson, R. A. G., Hill, P. V., and Kent, J. P. C., Late Roman Bronze Coinage (1965Google Scholar).

Page 242 note 1 It is most probable that the rebuilding and thickening of the colonia wall at The Park, and at West Parade the construction of the internal platform (p. 255) and the thickening north of the interval-tower (p. 256), were all part of a late fourth-century scheme. These structures were not in the main composed of reused material. Most of the reused masonry in the defences at Lincoln is confined to features such as gates and angle-towers (cf. Frere, op. cit., p. 299). Cf. also below, p. 257, n. 1.

Page 242 note 2 I am grateful to Dr. Graham Webster for clarifying my confused thoughts over this point.

Page 243 note 1 Gloria Romanorum (8), as CK 275, A.D. 364–78, and Salus Reipublicae (2) as CK 797, A.D. 388–95: Carson, Hill, and Kent, op. cit.

Page 243 note 2 Final report by Miss M. J. Darling on the pottery from this group to be published in fascicule form, forthcoming.

Page 243 note 3 A coin of Valentinian I, Securitas Reipublicae, as CK 481, A.D. 364–75, was found embedded in the core of the north wall of the north gate-tower. It appeared that the coin had been deposited there during construction of the gate, but the possibility that it was redeposited during nineteenth-century destruction of the masonry, although most unlikely, cannot entirely be ruled out.

Page 243 note 4 Ammianus Marcellinus, xxviii, 3; Frere, op. cit., pp. 4.09 ff.; and H. von Petrikovits, ‘Fortifications in the north-western Roman Empire’, J.R.S. lxi, (1971), 178 ff.

Page 244 note 1 At Silver Street in 1973; information from Mr. J. S. Wacher: Britannia, v (1974), 421 f.

Page 244 note 2 At Broadgate in 1973; interim report forthcoming.

Page 245 note 1 Timber buildings of first-century date have been found at Flaxengate (1946–7: Lines. Hist. and Arch, viii (1973), 74Google Scholar); at Holmes Grain-warehouse, on Ermine St. south of the river (1972: interim report forthcoming); and at Silver Street in 1973: see above, p. 244, n. 1.

Page 245 note 2 The Registrant Antiquissimum of the Cathedral Church of Lincoln, viii (ed. Kathleen Major, 1958), pp. 160–71 passim.

Page 245 note 2 Probably identifiable as Victoria Auggg, A.D. 388–92; Carson, Hill, and Kent op. cit., CK 164.

Page 247 note 1 ‘land … abutting on the king’s highway on the east and the wall of the city on the west, formerly had buildings on it and is now waste in a waste part of the city’; in a document of 1322: Major, op. cit., p. 170. This site and The Park lay in the parishes of St. Mary Crackpole or All Saints Hungate and the published documentation relating to them (Major, op. cit., pp. 150–88 passim), does not suggest that they were densely populated in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

Page 250 note 1 I am indebted to Mr. B. R. Hartley and Miss Brenda Dickinson for the secure identification of this sherd.

Page 250 note 2 Richmond, op. cit. 42: Thompson and Whitwell, op. cit. 130; and cf. Whitwell, op. cit. 36.

Page 254 note 1 In 1971, during construction work at the rear of the Eastgate Hotel on the eastern defences of the upper Roman town, another previously unsuspected interval-tower was discovered. Its north wall had been partially demolished and was used as part of the foundations of a solid internal platform of comparable dimensions to that found on Motherby Hill: interim report forthcoming.

Page 226 note 1 Marsden, E. W., Greek and Roman Artillery (1969), pp. 174Google Scholar ff.

Page 257 note 1 Cf. above, p. 242, n. 1. Internal thickenings added to the wall or stretches of rebuilt wide wall replacing the original colonia wall are now known at a number of points on the defences at Lincoln. In the upper town an upstanding section can be seen at East Bight: Richmond, op. cit., 30. Another example was found adjoining the north gate-tower of the east gate: Thompson and Whitwell, op. cit., 150; and at Temperance Place, Chapel Lane (Britannia, i (1970), 284), added masonry 9 feet (2·7m.) thick, later than the interval-tower, was found. A further stretch was noted in 1974 during reconstruction work at the cottage adjoining Newport Arch, immediately east of the east gate-tower, In the lower town a well-preserved length of rebuilt wall has recently been uncovered on the southern defences at Saltergate: Britannia, v (1974), 422 ff.

Page 257 note 2 In January 1975 a service-trench running east–west a few feet south of the southern limit of the site located masonry added to the rear of the colonia wall which was similar in appearance to the thickening north of the interval-tower.

Page 258 note 1 A reference in the Lincoln, Stamford and Rutland Mercury, 25th April 1845, may refer to this site, ‘In baring the foundations of the Roman Wall at Lincoln, near Beaumont Fee a few days ago, a perfect postern was discovered, with irons upon which the door had been hung: and the stones forming the arch were cut so that a door would fit in.’ I am indebted to Dr. Graham Webster who in the 1940s extracted this reference from The Exley Papers (now deposited in the Lincolnshire Archives Office) and left his notes filed in the Lincoln City and County Museum.

Page 259 note 1 Final publication forthcoming.

Page 259 note 2 Excavations were also carried out on the sites of Dickinson’s Mill and Holmes Grainwarehouse: interim report forthcoming.

Page 262 note 1 Now deposited in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, in the Gough Collection.

Page 262 note 2 Hill, op. cit., p. 86 f.

Mr. E. J. Willson, the Lincoln antiquary, writing in 1848, thought (incorrectly) that the error originated in a statement of Stukeley’s which referred to the Brayford tower as the Lucy Tower. But it should be noted, proving Willson’s attribution to Stukeley as incorrect, that the tower was called ‘Leucie’ in 1611 (‘Leucie tower at Braford side’) in Lincoln Corporation Monuments, lvii, entry of leases for 1611 (deposited in the Lines. Archives Office).

Willson, E. J., ‘Lincoln Castle’, in the Proceedings of the Archaeological Institute (1848), pp. 288Google Scholar f.

Stukeley, W., Itinerarium Curiosum (1724), p. 84Google Scholar.

Page 265 note 1 Hill, op. cit., p. 157.

‘Algar de nova terra’ appears in 1163–6 as a witness to the confirmation of a charter of Robert Chesney, Bishop of Lincoln: Documents Illustrative of the Social and Economic History of the Danelaw (ed. F. M. Stenton, 1920), p. 343. I am indebted to Dr. Major for this reference.

Page 266 note 1 Calendar of Patent Rolls; for the grant in 1253, C.P.R. 203; and grants in 1258, C.P.R. 642.

Page 266 note 2 Cf. above, p. 262, n. 2.

Page 266 note 3 Rotuli Hundredorum, i (1812), 325.