Queningate and the Walls of Durovernum

( 92 ) QUENINGATE AND THE WALLS OF DUROVERNUM. BY GREVILE MAIRIS LIVETT, E.S.A. (Hon. Canon of Rochester). THIS Paper is the fruit of an architectural study of the mediaeval waUs of Canterbury so far as they extend from the site of Worthgate, on the south, round by Ridingate and Burgate to Queningate on the east, and thence towards Northgate. The writer's aim is to justify the view (1) that those walls, buUt in the 14th and 15th centuries, run on the Une of waUs buUt at a date late in the Roman occupation of Britain for the purpose of enclosing suburbs that in the course of two or three centuries sprang up round the original Durovernum, and (2) that in them some remains of the Roman waUs are stiU visible. The area enclosed by that curving hne of waUs and the eastern branch of the river Stour flowing under King's Bridge is semi-oval in shape, some 1,100 yards long from south to north and 500 yards broad, comprising about 100 acres. Durovernum was never a garrison town, and such an area was much larger than was necessary for the accommodation of troops en route from Richborough and other SE ports to London and so on by Watling Street to the North. In its early days it can have been scarcely larger than Roman Rochester (Durobrevae), a station serving the same purpose in a simUar position at a rivercrossing and covering within its waUs less than 25 acres. This would agree fairly weU with the limited area, along the eastern branch of the river, thickly covered by foundations, tesselated floors and other indications of Roman habitation discovered, from 7 to 10 feet below the present surface, by James PUbrow in 1867-8, when he constructed the deep drainage system of the city. Unfortunately the QUENINGATE. 93 very inadequate notes of the excavations (Archceologia, XLIII, 1871) disclose no satisfactory evidence of waUs hke those which surrounded Durobrevis Castra: it is possible that the early fort, or town, of Durovernum was defended by nothing stronger than a pahsaded ditch. This is mere conjecture, but it is impossible to endorse Pilbrow's suggestion that foundations which he discovered under Sun Street and Guildhall Street were those of an early city-wall, since they converge towards Palace Street in too sharp an angle. Indeed it is impossible on the available evidence to plot either the boundary or the out-lay of the streets of early Durovernum—and that is aU that need be said about it here, except to remark that a later date is postulated for any hne of waUs enclosing a larger area. Thomas of Ickham made a mensuration of the citywalls in 1401. Wilham Somner printed the Latin document in an Appendix (iv) to his Antiquities of Canterbury (1640) and supphed a translation in his text (Battely's edition, 1703, p. 7. See also p. 103). It begins and ends with Quyningate, foUowing the hne of the existing waUs : " from the httle gate caUed Quyningate into Burgate XXXVIII Perches ", then to Newingate, Ridingate, Worgate, " the water behind St. Mildred's and the Bank of the River ", Westgate and along " the Long Wall " to the Stour, to " Waterlock" and Northgate, and so " from the Gate Northgate to Quyningate, which is towards (versus) the Priory of Christ-Church, LXIX Perches ". It is interesting for its description of Queningate as ' a httle gate ' (parva porta), though that hardly justifies some modern writers' description of it as a very httle gate ; and it is important as enabhng us to identify it with " a fragment of gateway having Roman characteristics " stiU to be seen in the wall a few feet south of Prior ChiUenden's square bastion (No. 3 in Plate iu) opposite to Lady Wotton's Green. Somner says he found the remains of the gate after seeking for it "as narrowly as for an Ants-Path ". It was weU known up to the early part of last century : for WUliam GostUng in A walk in and about Canterbury (1777, posthumous enlarged 94 QUENINGATE edition 1825) speaks of " Queningate of which a part of a Roman arch may yet be discovered on the outside of the waU " ; and Alderman Bunce, in his extracts from the city records (contributed to the Kentish Gazette in 1800-1, reprinted in 1924), teUs of " a remnant of British bricks a httle northward of Christ Church Postern ". Later on it was hidden from general view by a shed buUt in the angle of the waU and the bastion (3). Even Professor Willis (1844) describes and plans it inaccurately, whUe John Brent, F.S.A., the author of Canterbury in the Olden Time (1879) passes it by with a bare mention ; likewise T. G. Godfrey- Faussett, F.S.A., who devotes to it a short paragraph referring to the Queen Bertha tradition—had he seen it he could not have invented the elaborate evolution of the city waUs which he pubhshed in his Paper entitled Canterbury till Domesday in Arch. Journ., XXXII (1875). Nor could it have been seen, I think, by Scott-Robertson, whose Paper on Roman Canterbury in Arch. Cant., XV (1883), contains the best avaUable account, with plans, of Pilbrow's discoveries. But in the course of the summer meeting of the Royal Archaeological Institute at Canterbury in 1929 Mr. Gordon Home, F.S.A. (Scot.), drew attention to it, and a sketch from his pen appeared in the Proceedings pubhshed in Arch. Journ., LXXXVI (1929). The sketch has been reproduced in the third Kent volume of the Victoria County History (1932), illustrating a Paper in which Dr. R. E. Mortimer Wheeler, F.S.A., has brought his wide and expert knowledge of Roman Britain to bear upon the problem of Roman Canterbury, stating the pros and cons concerning the theory that the existing mediaeval waUs of the city foUow the hnes of Roman waUs, and pleading for further examination : to which it is hoped this Paper may be regarded as a shght contribution. It is worthy of note that aU the names of Thomas Ickham's mensuration have a Saxon derivation (of which a discussion may be relegated to Additional Notes at the end of this Paper), and it is indisputable that the city of Saxon times was defended by waUs. Historians vie with AND THE WALLS OF DUROVERNUM. 95 one another in recounting the terrors of its siege and capture by the Danes in 1011. The enemy, we are told, used aU warlike means either to batten or to scale ' the waUs' ; the whole city was set in a flame by fire thrown over ' the waUs ' ; the citizens abandoned the defence of ' the waUs ' and the city was captured; some feU by the sword, some perished in the flames, some are thrown headlong over ' the waUs '. By whom had those waUs been built ? Certainly not by Saxons. Professor Hamilton Thompson (Military Architecture in England) writes : " Work in stone which can be distinguished as Saxon is practicaUy confined to churches. Such fortifications as can be identified are entirely earthwork. In only a few cases we hear of an enceinte being built, or an old Roman town waU being repaired." Burhs or fortified towns and vUlages were defended by "an earthen bank with a stockade on the top and an outer ditch". As Alfred the Great " repaired Lundenburh " in 886, so the Saxons may have repaired the stone waUs that surrounded their Caniivarabyrig, but that they buUt them, or any considerable part of them, is unthinkable ; and we have to go back to the Roman occupation for the time of their origin. This disposes of Godfrey-Faussett's theory, previously mentioned, which attributes to King Ethelbert a hne of waU, no less than 900 yards in length, to enclose the royal palace and the Saxon church and their precincts. The whole of the area so enclosed must have lain within the boundary of the enlarged Roman town. Godfrey-Faussett's scheme would exclude it by a wall turning westwards at a point (d in Plate iii) in the eastern city waU 75 yards south of Queningate, running thence in a straight hne contiguous to the south wall of the nave of the cathedral and crossing the site of the south porch to connect up with the wall whose foundations Pilbrow found running along Sun Street. Faussett, misreading PUbrow's notes, represents it as running across the street (see Wheeler's criticism in V.C.H., p. 73). No tittle of evidence in support of Faussett's supposititious waU has been found in the Precincts, and, since it is agreed that the cathedral stands on 96 QUENINGATE. the site of St. Augustine's Saxon church, it would mean that the Saxon church was buUt upon the Roman town-ditch— an impracticable site. A suggestion (not made by Faussett) that the gate was buUt more Romano by the Saxons, just as they buUt St. Pancras and St. Martin's, is met, not only by the foregoing considerations, but also by the fact, revealed by close comparison, that its technique is quite incongruous with that of those churches, whUe it so closely resembles what is known of Worthgate and Ridingate as to compel the admission that aU three gates must be assigned to one period and to the same buUders. We may now proceed to a comparison of the three gates. The first requirement is an accurate survey of the fragment of Queningate and a comparison of its features with those of Worthgate and Ridingate as presented in descriptions and sketches made whUe those gates were stiU standing : they were demolished late in the 18th century. The shed which contains the fragment has long been occupied as a workshop by Mr. Thomas Marsh, wardrobe dealer, who has been careful to preserve it, and has given me every facility for close study. It is illustrated in Plate i. Two large squared blocks of Kentish rag which formed the upper part of the north jamb of the gate stiU remain, and springing therefrom there is part of an arch turned in Roman ' bricks ' or tUes about 20 inches long and l£ inches wide, of which thirteen (numbered in the sketch) remain. In the exposed face of the arch the tUes have weathered rather badly, especiaUy along their lower edge. The mortar-joints are mostly wide, but they are very uneven and the radiation is imperfect: the first four tiles were laid nearly flat, and in two instances the ends of the bricks on the intrados touch (4/5 and 8/9). The extrados was encircled by a ring of 9-inch bricks, of which only one remains in position, preserving the outer ends of the three uppermost radiating tUes from the damage suffered by most of the others. Another 9-inch brick is seen re-used in the rubble walling close by. The exposed mortar of the joints is rather crumbly, the effect of weathering. It contains some pebbles and a ^g^icS ^ c ? ^ : r ^ ^ ^ > . -T^- m.12 6 p 111111111 L i A.C. XLV. THE REMAINS OF QUENINGATE. PLATE I. 18 98 QUENINGATE. number of smaU flakes of flint, as weU as numerous bits of charcoal.1 I have been at pains to ascertain the radiation of the tUes and also the span of the arch on its springing-hne, adopting the foUowing method. Noticing that the position of the ends of the upper edge of brick No. 11 could be fixed I dropped plumb-lines through them, and found the hnes to be 19 inches apart horizontaUy. Being able also to recover the point of the upper edge on the intrados of Nos. 1, 3, 5 and 9, I measured their horizontal distance from the inner plumb-line and their vertical height from the level floor of the shop. Transferring the measurements to paper, on a scale of one-tweUth, I found by experiment that an arc of 4£ feet radius passed through all the points : this yields a span of 9 feet for the arch and 8J feet for the width of the gateway between its jambs. I think there cannot be an error of more than a few inches in this result. The radiation of the several tUes was obtained for the drawing of the sketch, within shght hmits of error, by points on my paper representing the vertical height, from the floor, of the upper edge of each the where it crossed the outer plumb-line. Each several point is indicated by a httle cross, and its height in inches by a figure alongside. The width of the jamb on the face of the wall is 2 feet, and the flint-rubble face of the little stretch (3£ ft.) of waU that, setting back shghtly from the plane of the gateway, intervenes between it and the bastion is hke that of the bastion. This shows that Prior ChUlenden (1391-1411), whose waU from Northgate southwards is distinguished by square bastions, built up to the gateway, which doubtless remained in use untU the existing postern and bridge, " the postern of the Dean and Chapter ", about 13 yards further south, was buUt in connection with the continuation of the re-building of the waU as far as Burgate, completed with apsidal bastions by Prior Sellinge (1472-94). Possibly it remained open for some time longer, for the Queningate bridge, caUed the Dean's bridge, was stUl in existence in 1598 (Bunce). 1 A fragment of a round-bottomed vessel of material similar to the bricks, seen in the rubble blocking of the arch, contains similar mortar that remains much harder. i, Cf Sr '-iH£i •JUodlUDJ 31JJ fo J3A3/' 3ltf UO JOO/f' Adddn 9 Iff fo UOlJJOd' O 3U1J p3J/0p UI -J3M0/ pUO •lf'\ I I | I M I | I I I | I'i'l'"' x 01 o or™ SJ/DA 9uj fo doj 31/j 3u// unfu/ s/t\3us uojd rit/j r '^^R NOIJ.03S 5J =: Ja- ^s 5i O *55^H^ « > 3 ^•C.K:3 •> . ^- ct ^ <1 V^SJL — lobfB'uui^oq 'ju30-i,si A.C. XLV. THE SITE OF QUENINGATE. PLATE II. 100 QUENINGATE The blocking masonry has no special significance. The sketch shows two putlog holes and several re-used blocks of Norman-wrought Caenstone. It may be worth notice that ChiUenden's bastion (see Plate U) stands on a turn of the city waU (which runs NNE from Burgate to the bastion, and onwards N by W from the bastion), and that Queningate was in the first section of the turn, which starts from an embrasure or crenel of the parapet about 7 yards from the bastion. Roman waUs of irregular plan in some cases had a gate on an angle, as in the town-waU of SUchester.1 So much for Queningate. We may now turn our attention to Worthgate and Ridingate. Worthgate stood in the waU near the Old Castle. It was mured up in 1548 and a new gate, caUed Wincheap Gate, was erected a httle eastward of it. The latter was removed in 1770, and in 1791 the blocked Worthgate was demohshed to make way for a continuation of Castle Street straight through to Wincheap. In the same year the demohtion of Ridingate across Watling Street was completed. It had previously been destroyed in part by the erection of a pointed arch through the head of it to give more headway for traffic. The existing arrangement, of vertical side-waUs supporting an over-head passage, was buUt in 1883, as recorded by an inscription. The accompanying Plates (iv and v) are photographic reproductions of drawings of these two gates made by William Stukeley and pubhshed in his Itinerarium Curiosum (1724).2 jThey are invaluable as showing their 1 The plan of ChiUenden's bastion in Plate II. shows it as it would appear to one looking down upon it from above. The dotted lines show the lines of a door giving access from the rampart to a floor on the rampartlevel. The floor has been removed, making it impossible to complete the plan at that level. I was able, however, to indicate approximately the plan of an annexe to the bastion outside the north wall which afforded room with a seat for a watchman to survey through a small window the city wall, running thence to the next bastion. Inset " B " shows an interesting Norman stone that appears in the inner face of the wall below the rampart south of the bastion; and inset " C ", the section of a stone built into the wall north of the bastion. 2 Brent's book, in many respects a valuable work, contains very inaccurate copies of Stukeley's sketches. Other pencil sketches may be seen in the Royal Museum, Canterbury, by Mary T. Scudamore, the daughter of a medical man who lived in Castle Street in the early part of last century. RUTTINGTON ^rrr/7m G.M.l./gn. 05T£RN GARDEN y/DOl,EJf/c/<^!^^ DEANERY STETH^, JENKINS A.C. XLV. THE ADJACENCIES OF QUENINGATE. PLATE HI. 102 QUENINGATE general character and as illustrating some rather vague descriptions. Writers are agreed that the arches were turned in long bricks. John Leland (c. 1540), for instance, says : " The most auncyent buUding of the towne appereth yn the Castel " (i.e. in the Worthgate, hard by the castle) " and at Ryders Gate where appere long Roman brikes " ; but Stukeley's drawing of the Worthgate arch makes it tww JRudma (rate. ss p& sa* i lft# Wm -A. j vm # h< J fflSKsfl a 5fflgKCTgggg%BJ •Jmm 1H W^.'Miiliii^i/^^uUuil *ss P « ! Photo: Lander STUKELEY'S RIDINGATE A.C. XLV PLATE IV look as U it was turned in modern bricks, each course consisting of a ' header' and a ' stretcher', neighbouring courses ' breaking joint'; and those of Ridingate, as if they consisted of long tUes alternating with two short ones, surrounded by a ring of short bricks. The jambs of the gateways, on the other hand, the large stones of which did not require observation of minute detaU, he represents in a way that may be accepted as correct. With regard to Worthgate : Hasted (1799) describes it as " a perfect arch of long British or Roman bricks of great AND THE WALLS OF DUROVERNUM. 103 1 u 0) •u fe t>" 1 k£C "VPti h*.J* m ^ "TnZp" 5>i^ 3>e -$$3* •*)>. i , r A .'PLI '•^ZkOTSK//// 1 f l f i f I4H1:^^5,»IU1*''T4' II1S3 (rcnr ; H n: r " "\ I^^Lr^Ltl"1 in §?5 zx^' 104 QUENINGATE. strength and beauty . . . the remains of which were nearly entire a few years since " ; and in a footnote he adds that the bricks were " set edgeways, each 15 inches long and 1| inches thick". Gosthng, who saw the blocked arch stiU standing, gives a complete hst of measurements, from which the foUowing may be selected : breadth of the gateway, 12 ft. 6 in. ; height of the gate in the middle, 13 ft. 1\ in. ; thickness of the arch, 2 ft. 4 in. With regard to Ridingate : Stukeley, evidently referring to the pointed arch seen in his drawing, says it was " buUt by a mayor of the city, but evidently in place of a roman one, for there is part of the roman arch, and the peer of one side stiU visible, but much lower than the present gate " (of unknown date) ; " and in a yard close by is part of a postern, or foot-gate, by the side of i t ; these arches are of roman brick ". And Gostling, who saw the remains in the same condition, says : " The Roman gate here had two contiguous arches, turned with the large and thin bricks of those times, remains of which are still to be seen ; but the ground has been so raised that the top of a stone pier from which one of those arches sprung is but breast high from the road, and the arch cut away to give the necessary height to the present gate of later construction ". I think it may be assumed that the original main gateway matched Worthgate in every respect; and that the side-gate was smaUer, but in other respects simUar. A tabulation of the detaUs of the gateways leads to the conviction that Queningate was buUt at the same time as the other two gates. For this purpose the two archways of Ridingate may be numbered separately : W=Worthgate. R1=Ridingate, large arch. Q== Queningate. R2=Ridingate, smaU arch. Stone jambs (or ' piers ') .. W, R1, Q and probably R2. Arches turned in long tUes . . W, R1, R2, Q. Span at springing greater than between jambs .. W, R1, Q and probably R2. Extrados ringed with a single course of bricks .. .. R1, R2, Q. AND THE WALLS OF DUROVERNUM. 105 Probably aU were of the same thickness as Worthgate, i.e., about 2\ ft. ; Worthgate and the larger Ridingate were intended for vehicular traffic and about \2\ ft. wide ; Queningate and the small Ridingate for foot passengers and about 8\ ft. wide.1 None of the gateways seems to have had any additional defence-work either inside or outside. The correlation of Queningate with Worthgate and Ridingate and its site on a turn of the waUs having both been shown, there can be no doubt that the early waU that united them continued along the hne of the existing waUs to Northgate ; and it may be taken for granted that gates having simUar characteristics existed at Burgate (the gate of the Saxon burh or town) and Northgate (or Staplegate). It remains to examine the waUs that run between these gates to see U they contain any remains that can be recognized as Roman work. There is no record of the date of the rebuUding of the wall that runs with its bastions and earthen rampart from near Worthgate to Ridingate, and presents to the ditch a clean and umform face of fine flint-rubble. Fifteen yards south of Ridingate its character suddenly changes and for 7 or 8 yards onwards towards the gate its face is shghtly out of line with the rest of the waU ; and, except for the lower part of it rising a few feet above the edge of the ditch, that face is rough and uneven. Immediately above that lower part there runs a strip of waU-face 2\ to 3 feet in height that consists of four or five fairly weUdefined courses of large flints set in a plentUul amount of mortar, and the mortar contains smaU bits of charcoal! High up in the waU the face shows another smaU patch or two of boulder-flints. All these patches may weU be remains of the original Roman waU where it has escaped being re-buUt or re-faced.2 1 Colchester (early) had a small gate, 6 ft. wide, and Caerwent (early) had single openings, 8 ft. 9 in. wide. The Newport Arch at Lincoln had a separate opening for foot passengers, like Ridingate. 2 A brief postscript may be added. The Norman castle was built just inside the city wall immediately west of Worthgate, which then became the south gate of the bailey, the road (Castle Street) which had led through it being diverted so as to avoid the bailey and to pass out through a new 1 0 6 QUENINGATE Beyond Ridingate the agger runs on as far as the site of St. George's Gate, but the old retaining waU has been destroyed, and the rampart along the ditch that now serves for the cattle market is faced by a brick waU. Between St. George's Gate and the site of Burgate houses have been built on the ditch and the hnes of the rampart and its waU, but Burgate Lane represents the line of the lane that originaUy ran along the foot of the rampart both here and elsewhere. On the north side of Burgate (Plate Ui) the lane reappears for a short distance as a passage into Dr. Jenkins' garden. Then the rampart begins again and continues up to the brick waU that separates the garden from the War Memorial Garth, where it ceases (d). It is this stretch of the waU, buUt up against the rampart as a comparatively thin retaining waU facing the new car park on the site of the city ditch, that has a special interest and importance for us in our investigation. In my opinion we have, in the first 21 to 22 yards (from a to b) evident remains of the Roman waU ; whUe the rest of it, and as far as e in the map, has undergone less thorough rebuUding than any other parts of the city waUs. The 15th-century buUders, ChiUenden and his successors, working southwards from Northgate, removed the rampart and buUt on its hnes a new waU of considerable thickness (6-ijr ft. at the top) with bastions. A section, taken near the ' postern ', is shown in the inset A, Plate U. It ends at e, about 10 yards south of bastion 2. It is probable that the rampart from e to d had been removed at an earher gate, named Wincheap Gate, seventy yards from Worthgate, since destroyed. Near Worthgate, Pilbrow discovered remains of a wall which contained tiles, 14 and 18 inches long; and Brent, excavating at the site of Wincheap Gate, found just below the surface the foundations of a wall of flint and concrete resting on native brickearth, which he took to be mediaaval. But, as Dr. Wheeler says, mediaeval concrete is hard to distinguish from Roman. The fact that a cremation cemetery of large area, including urn- and mound-burials (Dane John ?) is crossed by the city wall running from Worthgate eastwards suggests that the Roman gate and its wall cannot have been of a date early in the Roman occupation. Further outside, in Wincheap, inhumation-burials have been found, which may have been Christian. Other cremation cemeteries exist in two or three places outside the city walls. The reader is referred to the detailed descriptions in Vict. Oounty History and Arch. Journ., LXXXVI. ,.ff •.. •• ** - • ^ ^ THE ROMAN WALL (a—b) AND ' FOOTING.' A.C. XLV. Photo : Charlton. PLATF: VI. AND THE WALLS OF DUROVERNUM. 107 date to make room against the retaining waU for the church of ' St. Mary Queningate ', described in the records as situated in Queningate Lane. From e southwards, as far as a point b the builders refaced in part and in part rebuUt the thin retaining waU with a batter rising from the bottom right up to the top of the parapet. Its rubble-face is made up of flints of various sizes and many fragments of old wrought-stone, including Caenstone, Purbeck and Bethersden marble, Quarr Abbey stone and Kentish rag ; and it is much disfigured by brickwork, plastered surfaces, and other signs of a brewery that was demolished in 1930 to make way for the car park. It ends (at b) in an upright joint plainly visible in the photograph, Plate vi. So we return to the short extent of waU that seems to me to be mainly Roman (from a to b, Ui and vi). A section is shown in Plate u. Reference also to the photograph wiU help the reader to understand the description that foUows. For about 5 yards (beyond the bush in the photo) the waU runs down behind the platform of the new lavatories. Thence a paved pathway runs with a shght slope downwards along the foot, from which the waU rises to its fuU height of 20 or 21 feet. For two-thirds of its height it batters, sloping backwards 12 or 15 inches, and then rises verticaUy about 7 feet to the flat coping-stones. In the uppermost 3 ft. it is faced with smaU knapped flints laid in courses, which clearly indicates a repair, or perhaps a heightening, of the original parapet. In the 4 feet immediately below, rising aU along from the limiting hne of the batter, there runs a strip of what I believe to be the face of the Roman waU, unaltered except from the weathering of the mortarjoints. It shows seven courses of large boulder-flints, many of them set aslant, herringbone-wise, with an occasional larger flint or a large rag-stone laid flat. The lines of the courses are plainly visible on the left-hand side of the photograph. The greater part of the battering waU below shows that it has been refaced with smaU flints, hke the parapet, and plastered, patches of the plaster stiU remaining. But here and there a boulder-flint peeps out, suggesting 108 QUENINGATE that it was originaUy faced in the same manner as the strip above ; and this is confirmed by the condition of a portion, towards the north end, which has been exposed in some way to more destructive agencies but stiU retains ample evidence of courses of boulder-flints. There is further evidence of this early waU. North of the junction b the 15th-century wall makes a gentle curve to the left, too shght to be perceptible on the map. For about 10 yards the lower part is plastered in two or three sections. At the end of the plaster a rough ' footing ' about 12 inches high emerges from behind it and runs on straight, without foUowing the 15th-century curve. The path slopes downwards, but the so-caUed footing continues level so that it graduaUy becomes greater in height and wider in projection, untU at c, 15 yards from the bastion No. 1, it is about 4 feet high and projects 18 inches from a plastered face of the later waU that rises from it. (See a section in Plate ii.) Then it disappears behind a bush and is covered by brickwork of the demohshed brewery. There can be httle doubt it is the base of the original retaining waU of the rampart that runs behind it. Why the 15th-century buUders working southwards from the bastion did not foUow the line of the face of the original waU when they rebuUt it is matter for conjecture which it would be tedious to discuss. But the fact remains that setting back its face they buUt upon the old waU's base, which they left to form a footing to their new waU, as we see it still. The footing is faced with flint-boulders, many of them larger than those of the strip of the old waU which we studied in the preceding paragraph. Some of them are set aslant and they are more roughly coursed, with a few bits of Roman brick intermixed. But such features near the bottom of a waU are not surprising. At one spot the ' footing ' has been cut through for the insertion of the end of a modern brick waU, of which a few courses remain, and immediately above them the mortar of the core of the old waU is exposed, and it contains specks of charcoal! This fact correlates it with the strip near Ridingate and with Roman Queningate. AND THE WALLS OF DUROVERNUM. 109 It is not known when Bennywith Island, bounded by two streams of the Stour, one flowing just outside Westgate and the other under the' Eastbridge' of the island by St. Thomas's hospital, was added to the circuit of the city. In pre- Roman times and perhaps later it must have been, at low tide, a mud-flat of the ' estuary ' of the river from which Slurry got its name. It is possible, though I think unlikely, that it was added in late-Roman times, but the only knowledge we have is that the existing Westgate, buUt by Abp. Sudbury in the 14th century, replaced an earher structure which supported the original church of the Holy Cross. We know nothing, too, of the approach of the late-Roman waU from the neighbourhood of the river to Northgate. From Northgate eastwards and southwards we are on more certain ground. All along this stretch, as far as Queningate and a point (e) 75 yards beyond it Prior ChiUenden and his successors, as we have seen, removed the Roman waU and rampart and buUt a new waU of considerable thickness, which may or may not contain some portions of the original retaining waU. This mediaeval wall in its later portion runs paraUel to, and at a distance of some 40 feet from, Lanfranc's priory waU, of which the line is stiU preserved in the waU marked * Norman Priory waU ' in my map, Plate in. In the intervening space ran Queningate Lane, bordered by dwelling houses, ' letten ' by the city fathers to the Dean and Chapter and finally conveyed to them in return for an undertaking that they would maintain the city waU in repair. The chronicle of John Stone (ed. W. G. Searle, 1902) contains an interesting entry of the death in 1458 of a monk named Ricardus Quenygate, which imphes the existence of such dwelling houses. At the point e the thick wall ends, but the rampart was removed from the retaining waU for a further 35 feet (e-d). I think, as I have previously remarked, that this interval marks the site of the vanished church, St. Mary Queningate, which is mentioned in the conveyance of a plot of land bounded on the east by the city waU and on the west and south by Queningate Lane. The use of the other Roman gates is clear : Northgate 110 QUENINGATE as an exit on to the road to Reculver; Burgate, to Richborough ; Ridingate, to Dover ; and Worthgate, by Stone Street to Lymne. But the use of ' the httle gate, Queningate ' is obscure : perhaps it was a postern for foot-passengers leading to a church buUt, as Bede says, ' whUe the Romans were stiU in the land', on the site of which the Saxon church of St. Martin stands : U so, it confirms the suggestion of a Roman date for the gate and the waUs. The presumption, based on their peculiar features and the size of the area they enclosed, is that the waUs were buUt late in the Roman period, perhaps by citizens rather than soldiers, not for purely mihtary purposes but for their security in an expanded Roman-British town. Like those of other towns, such as London, Silchester and Colchester, whatever their date, they did not enclose a rectangular area. But they were unlike those of towns of early date in their thinness, not more than 3 or 4 feet at the base, and in the plan of their gates, which is peculiar for the absence of any sign of projecting towers ; nor is there any indication of the way in which the passage through the embankment was arranged. But the gates, Uke those of other polygonal towns, some of them at least, were buUt on angles of the perimeter. (See plans in R. G. CoUingwood's Arch, of Rom. Brit.) The only sign of regard for the need of strength in the gates is the use of large blocks of squared stone in their jambs, remarkable only in view of the total absence of such squared stone as is usuaUy found in the facing of walls defending fort and town. The use of coursed flints and rough stone, however, is common in the thinner waUs of houses and other buUdings, and SUchester and the 4th-century Saxon Stone fort of Burgh Castle supply examples in their outer waUs of defence ; though bondingcourses occur in them, in one case of flat stone, in the other of tile.1 The technique too, is Roman, the flint-boulders being fairly regularly coursed and most of them set aslant 1 P.S.—Excavations at Chichester show that the Roman settlement was surrounded by an earth bank retained by a wall ' built entirely of flint, about 3 ft. thick at the bottom, surprisingly poor, with hardly any foundations.'—The Times, Oct. 4th, 1933. AND THE WALLS OF DUROVERNUM. Ill sufficiently to fiU the width of the courses. The core of Roman walls that were faced with squared stone were usually built of flints and stones set aslant in courses with a plentHul amount of mortar to form a sohd concrete, as may be seen at Rochester and Reculver wherever the core has been denuded of its facing. The coUection of boulder-flints and their transport from the sea-shore would be more economical than the shaping of Kentish rag and its carriage from Maidstone or elsewhere. Discussion of matters which, though pertinent, do not easily fit into the text of this Paper without breaking the train of argument are relegated to the following Additional Notes. ADDITIONAL NOTES I QUENINGATE. Derived from the A.S. Cwene, genitive of cwen, and geat: ' Queen's Gate '. Early forms : Quengate, Quenegate, Quenygate. The redundant n in Queningate, 14th century, illustrates a common tendency to change of such a compound into ing. Cf. Lukedale . . . Luckendale, Luckingdale. Land juxta Quenegate was given to St. Augustine's by a charter summarized by the chronicler WiUiam Thorne (late XIV) and dated 760. His successor Thomas Elmham (early XV) gives the charter at length and dates it 762. It may be spurious, but Elmham's rubric, Carta . . . de terra infra Quengate, i.e., Reginae porta, suppUes evidence of the early date of the tradition that the gate was used by Ethelbert's Queen. RTTTTINGTON LANE. This may supply an example of a simUar corruption of names in speech. Drutingstraete is mentioned in two suspect charters of 605, quoted by Thorne and Elmham, whereby certain lands are granted to the monastery of SS. Peter and Paul (St. Augustine's). The date of the forgery is unknown. If the supposition that Drutingstraete meant ' King's Road ' is correct the name must have been a corruption of drihtenes or drihtnes, the 112 QUENINGATE genitive of drihten (ahas druhten), a lord, ruler, king. By Thome's time it had become transformed into Droutynton, as the chronicler explained for the information of his ' modern ' readers. The substitution of the suffix ton for street, though it usuaUy means some sort of enclosure, may be an indication that a cluster of dwellings had grown near the road (see N.E.D., under ' Town '). But earher than that, in the 13th-century Black Book of St. Augustine's we find, in addition to Drutinton, the forms Thrutinion and Throiinton, indicating that the initial D was the aspirated D ; and in the same Black Book the form Rodintun occurs, showing that by a natural process of corruption the initial T disappeared and so finally it became Rutington, and Rutington Lane, as printed in the map of 1798 Hasted's Hist, of Kent and in that of the 1825 edition of Gostling's Walk. StiU later it became Old Ruttington Lane, as in the Ordnance Map of 1871. The prefix was added to distinguish it from a road running at right-angles to it from its northern end, across Mihtary Road, to Northgate Street, previously known as ArtUlery Lane but then renamed New Ruttington Lane. It may be added that, as Drutingstraete had lost its initial D at a much earher date, to attribute the loss to ehsion in speech in consequence of the prefix, as if Old Druttington became Old Ruttington, is an anachronism. EquaUy inadmissible is a suggestion that Drutingstreate should be interpreted as meaning ' Queen Street'. For drihten or druhten was a mascuhne noun, and according to the dictionaries no feminine form of it occurs in Old Enghsh literature. With the single exception of Old Norse, the same is true of aU the cognate languages. But, notwithstanding, ' King's Street' may weU have been the queen's route. But there is difficulty in accepting the existing ' he ' of Ruttington Lane as representing that of Saxon (or, to be more correct, of Jutish) Drutingstraete. In the course of centuries the lay-out of the land and its ways hereabouts must have been altered again and again, and it is highly probably that, whUe the name in its modifications has subsisted to our time, its application has been changed. It AND THE WALLS OF DUROVERNUM. 113 is mentioned in the suspect charter as forming the west and north boundary of the monastic land. This description is not appropriate to the existing Old Ruttington Lane, which starts from Broad Street at a distance of fully 100 yards from Queningate and runs in a NE. direction, weU away from that boundary and St. Martin's, and thence (in the words of Bunce) " at the north end of it is a path leading in two directions, one towards the old Park and Fordwich, the other to the Little Barton ", not the Little Barton Farm that hes just south of the Borough Asylum, but ' the Manor of Little Barton, almost adjoining the river Stour, about a mile northward from Northgate ' (Hasted, fo. I l l 445). The description would apply more appropriately to a lane, long since swept away by later buildings but known in mediaeval times as Dodelane, that started from a point near to Quenygate and " extended towards North Holmes " (Bunce), the road that still forms the north, boundary of St. Augustine's and leads to St. Martin's. The land that was granted to the monastery and contained the church of St. Pancras, perhaps on the site of the national pagan temple, may well have been the fundus of the pagan priest, and the road round it would be the shortest way for Queen Bertha as she went from Queningate to her place of worship. RIDINGATE. This may possibly supply yet another example of the corruption of the penultimate syUable. Rederchepe, from Hryder ,' cattle', and ceap, ' market', is mentioned in Ethelbert's spurious charter (Cod. Dipl. 3). Ridingate, Redingate, or Redersgate, may have originally been Hrydergale, the gate leading to the cattle-market, through the site of which, when it was removed to the city ditch, Dover Street was driven. The derivation may be thought fanciful, but it is not more so than ' the Road Gate ' or ' the Riders' Gate '. WORTHGATE. In Saxon times this gate was chiefly used for communication with the important village and district of Wye. Weowera-get (Cart. Sax., 449) was a Canterbury gate, ' the gate of the Wye people '. Wiwartlest was ' the lathe of 14 114 QUENINGATE the Wye people '. Other forms : Wrtgate, Wurgate, Worgate. The transition to Worthgate may perhaps be traced in a quotation from a charter (Cart. Sax., 762) : villam regalem quae nominatur Wyth, ' the royal vill or Manor of Wye'. BURGATE. Burhgat, gate of the Saxon burh, borough or town, on the site doubtless of a Roman gate. II It is highly probable that the Normans found the city walls sadly in need of repair owing to the assaults of the Danes and natural decay. Their buUders in Normandy inherited the Roman technique, and I myself at one time was inclined to attribute the strip of boulder-flint facing, near Burgate, to their work. But later study, detaUed in this Paper, has convinced me that such a view is untenable : though the Danes would doubtless destroy here and there the parapets they would scarcely be hkely to attack the waU below, supported as it was by the earthen rampart. Work upon the waUs has been attributed to Archbishop Lanfranc. But on what authority ? Just five centuries after the archbishop's completion of his cathedral church, Lambard (Perambulation, 1576, ed. 1656) says that " Lanfranc and Sudbury did cost upon the gates and walls, bringing thereby both strength and beauty to the citie". And Leland (Itinerary, c. 1540, ed. Toulmin Smith, 1909) says that ' in the first book of Eadmer it is evident that Lanfranc had restored Christ Church and its offices, burned by the Danes, and also actively built (strenue aedificasse) in the same city.' Eadmer the monk began his Historia Novorum in Anglia (ed. Martin Rule, RoUs Series), early in the 12th century : speaking of Lanfranc's architectural achievements he makes no mention of any buUding within the city other than the priory and the Ecclesia Salvatoris ; but he teUs of the archbishop's foundation of the lesser monastery of St. Gregory and two hospitals (St. John's and St. Nicholas, Harbledown), beyond the city waUs ; and he refers also to the archbishop's buUding activities at St. Albans and Rochester. These AND THE WALLS OF DUROVERNUM. 115 works must surely have absorbed the archbishop's energy and resources avaUable for buUding. Eadmer does not mention the city walls, the upkeep of which was incumbent upon the citizens and outside the purview of the archbishop, who had surrounded Christ Church and the priory buildings by an independent waU.