Southampton's town walls are a sequence of defensive structures built around the town in southern England. Although earlier Roman and Anglo-Saxon settlements around Southampton had been fortified with walls or ditches, the later walls originate with the move of the town to the current site in the 10th century. This new town was defended by banks, ditches and the natural curve of the river and coastline. The Normans built a castle in Southampton but made no attempts to improve the wider defences of the town until the early 13th century, when Southampton's growing prosperity as a trading centre and conflict with France encouraged the construction of a number of gatehouses and stone walls to the north and east sides of the settlement.
In 1338 Southampton was raided by French forces; the town's defences proved inadequate, particularly along the quays on the west and south of the city. Edward III ordered some immediate improvements to Southampton's town walls but it was not until the 1360s that substantial work began. Over the coming decades the town was entirely enclosed by a 2 km (1.25-mile) long stone wall, with 29 towers and eight gates. With the advent of gunpowder weapons in the 1360s and 1370s, Southampton was one of the first towns in England to install the new technology to existing fortifications and to build new towers specifically to house cannon.
Southampton's town walls remained an important defensive feature during the 15th century, the gatehouses sometimes being used as important civic facilities, including acting as the town's guildhall and housing the town's gaol. From the end of the 17th century their importance steadily declined and the walls were slowly demolished or adapted for other uses throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. This process continued into the early 20th century until, in the post-war years, the walls were recognised as an important historical feature of Southampton. Conservation projects have since occurred and the walls are now promoted as a tourist attraction.
History
1st–10th centuries Several earlier settlements were built near modern Southampton featuring protective town walls. Following the Roman conquest of Britain in AD 43 the fortress settlement of Clausentum was established. It was an important trading port and a defensive outpost for the town of Winchester, located on the site of Bitterne Manor, today a suburb of modern Southampton. Clausentum was defended on its eastern, landwards side by a flint stone wall and two ditches.Grinsell, p.208. After the fall of the Roman Empire, in the 7th and 8th centuries the Anglo-Saxons built a planned settlement called Hamwic, close to the current location of Southampton, approximately on the location of the later St Mary's church. At least some parts of this burh town had a ditch dug around it, 3 m (10 feet) wide and 1.5 m (5 feet) deep, and possibly was defended by a bank of earth.Creighton and Higham, p.56. In the 10th century, Viking raids prompted the settlement of Southampton to move to its current location.
11th–13th centuries
By the time that the Normans conquered England in 1066, the town of Southampton occupied a rectangular area overlooking the mouth of the River Test, an important medieval waterway. It was protected by water on most sides and by protective ditches and banks to the north and east.Mackenzie, p.212; Pounds, p.152. Southampton at this time was a relatively large town, but not as significant as in the later medieval period.Dyer, p.62. The Normans built a castle within the town on the site of a probable large English hall, and considerable damage was caused to the surrounding local buildings as space was opened up for the new fortification.Drage, p.119; Ottaway, p.171; Liddiard, p.19.
During the years of the Anarchy, in which the Empress Matilda and Stephen fought for control of England, Southampton was held by William le Gros, the Bishop of Winchester and a supporter of Stephen.White, p.7. When Henry II came to the throne in 1153, he took back Southampton and carried out improvements to the castle, as part of his attempt to improve the general standard of security in the south. By the second half of the 12th century, Southampton was increasingly important for coastal defence and as a base for operations on the continent.Pounds, p.152. Following the threat of French invasion in the 1170s, Henry II invested modest additional resources in the castle, but no efforts were undertaken to improve the town's ditches and banks.Brown (1962), p.42; Pounds, p.78.
By the 12th century, Southampton was an important trading port with trade routes to Normandy, the Levant and Gascony.Mackenzie, p.212. Both the town and castle played an important role in this trade, in part forming a warehouse for the king's imports, this process being managed by a Crown Bailiff.Brown (1999), p.156. The former castle hall was turned into a subterranean vault in the 13th century, probably for storing wine.Mackenzie, p.212; Brown (1999), p.156. Stone houses, often combining accommodation and storage facilities, began to be built in Southampton by the wealthiest merchants, particularly in the prosperous western and southern parts of the town, but these properties could not be easily defended against attack.Creighton and Higham, p.70.
The English Channel was contested militarily between England and France during the 13th century, and Southampton was both an important base for naval operations and a tempting target for raiders.Hughes, p.123. At the start of the 13th century additional work was therefore conducted to improve the town's defences; the king granted £100 in 1202 and again in 1203 to help develop the earth banks around the town. By 1217 East Gate had been built, probably of stone.Turner, pp.170–171. In 1260 a murage grant was given to Southampton by Edward I, allowing the town to tax selected imports to build and maintain new stone walls; these initial murage grants ran from 1260 to 1275 and were then renewed between 1282 and 1285 and from 1286 to 1291.Turner, p.171. By the end of this work, many of the earth banks in the north and east of the town had been converted to stone. There appears to have been little interest in defending the west and south quays, however, probably because doing so would have hampered Southampton's merchants when they moved their trading goods in and out of the town.Hughes, p.135.
14th century
By 1300, Southampton was a major port and a large provincial town, with a population of around 5,000.Dyer, p.190. The raising of money through murage grants began again in 1321, possibly paying for the stone towers of the Bargate and some of the semi-circular wall towers. Work also appears to have begun on some stone walling to the south and west of the town, construction may have begun at the South Gate and a wooden barbican was constructed near the western docks.Turner, p.172; Hughes, p.135; MSH2247, Southampton HER, accessed 19 October 2011. Later investigations by the Crown would suggest that some of the monies raised in these murage grants had been misspent, however, contributing to the poor standard of town defences, which included large gaps in the walled circuit.Turner, p.172.
In 1338 there was a successful French attack on Southampton: the town's defences, particularly in the west, proved quite inadequate and the French succeeded in burning numerous buildings down, particularly along the western quays, and damaging the castle.Ottaway, p.171; Turner, p.172; MSH23, Southampton HER, accessed 20 January 2011. Edward III responded to the raid by taking immediate steps to shore up Southampton's defences and ordering the town to be fully enclosed by stone walls. In 1339 the sheriff conscripted workmen and specialists to improve the defences, and money to pay for the building materials was raised by commuting the prison sentence of a senior official in Southampton to a fine.Turner, p.173. Murage grants were reinstated in 1345, but the economy of Southampton had been temporarily devastated by the raids and indeed never fully recovered.Turner, p.173; Hughes, p.131; Coppack, pp.19–20. The king's instructions to fully enclose the town with walls could not be carried out. Nonetheless, by the 1350s, Southampton had mounted mangonel and springald siege engines on the existing walls.Creighton and Higham, p.110.
In 1360 the king conducted an inquiry into Southampton's defences and in 1363 he established a wider commission to examine how best to improve them.Turner, p.173; Creighton and Higham, p.183. The commission came to a number of conclusions: the town walls should be better maintained and kept clear of housing and other obstructions; the number of gateways in the walls should be reduced; and a water-filled ditch should be built to further reinforce the walls on the west. The enquiry also concluded that the outer doors and ground floor windows of properties facing the sea should be filled in to form a more defensible line.
The resulting work on Southampton's defences resulted in considerable improvements: by the late 14th century, the town was completely encircled by 2 km (1.25 miles) of stone walls. Some existing buildings, including a dovecote, were reinforced and pressed into service as part of the defences.Creighton and Higham, p.147. South Gate was built to protect the southern quays, with a wide archway, complete with parapets and machicolations. The building work proved very expensive, however, and despite the mayor and bailiffs enforcing contributions and assistance from the citizens, Parliament had to be asked several times in the 1370s to assist by remitting arrears of taxes owed by Southampton.Turner, pp.174–175.
In 1370 the French made a successful attack on Portsmouth, commencing a new sequence of raids along the English coast.Emery, p.284. In due course first Edward, then Richard II, responded by improving the defences in the south of England. Part of this involved improving the condition of Southampton Castle, where, owing in part to the theft of building materials, including stone and lead, by the citizens of the town, the defences were in a poor condition.Emery, pp.284, 298; Mackenzie, p.213. Henry Yevele, who oversaw the improvements to the castle, probably also constructed the Arcades along the western walls in 1380: this involved adopting the 1360 proposal to block up the properties along the western quay to form a solid wall, and adding three towers and gunports. Sir John Sondes and John Polymond were appointed by the king in 1386 to further improve the town walls, working with Sir John Arundel, the castle governor – Polymond and Arundel Towers were probably named after these men around this time.Turner, p.175.
One of the major changes from the 1370s onwards was the adaptation of the town walls to mount gunpowder weapons.Creighton and Higham, p.111. At this time cannon were still unreliable, only capable of reaching relatively short ranges and required the construction of specialist gunports. Cannons fired stone cannonballs, which did relatively little damage to stronger stone walls, and so were primarily used in defence of fortifications rather than as an offensive weapon by besiegers.Pounds, p.253; Turner, p.175. The first gunports in Britain were installed in the 1360s on the Isle of Wight, but Southampton was not far behind. Around 1378 to 1379 the ongoing French threat led to gunports for handguns being built into the western Arcade wall, and by 1382 the town bought its own gun.Creighton and Higham, p.111; MSH919, Southampton HER, accessed 14 October 2011. God's House Tower was built to defend the southern quays around 1417 and the sluices that controlled the level of the town's moats, and equipped with numerous gunports and rooftop firing points, and by 1439 Catchcold tower had also been constructed, again designed to accommodate gunpowder weapons.Turner, p.175; Kenyon, p.146.