Londinium Continued - London Wall Walk

While walking back to the tube station after Saturday's trip to the Museum of London, we had found a plaque marking “the London Wall Walk.” We decided to come back and try to follow this walk and find more hidden bits of the wall ruins.

Our walk began at plaque #2 on Tower Hill. This portion of the wall is where the tombstone of Classicianus (as seen in our previous pictures) was found. The wall here is nearly 35 ft high and is now a mixture of original Roman stonework and numerous Medieval repairs and reconstructions. Sadly, much of the wall was demolished during the 18th century since it was no longer needed for defense. Luckily for us, a few surviving areas of wall were discovered in the 20th century. In fact, many Roman artifacts and ruins were uncovered because of German bombings during WWII. I suppose that’s some sort of bright side?

Each plaque gives three locations: the position of the plaque you are looking at, that of the previous plaque, and that of the next plaque. We thought it would be easy to follow the trail in this way. Little did we know… At the site of what we thought was plaque #3, there was no plaque, but we did find wall ruins. You could see the same pattern of Roman stones mixed with newer bricks. We had read earlier that the Romans used flat red tiles intermittently to support the stonework. This was suggested as a way to recognize the Roman wall from newer additions. As we walked on, we made our way to Gracechurch St. Some Jane Austen readers may immediately recognize this street, but today it was not to do with the Bennets/Gardeners, but with the Romans. Gracechurch St marks the center aisle of what was once the site of the Roman Forum and Basilica in Londinium. The site of these ancient structures are now marked by streets (Click here for a map indicating this area). Since we had no idea where plaque #4 actually was, we decided to walk along Gracechurch St, then head back to where the wall was supposed to be. Eventually, we found plaque #7. Our tour carried on in this way; from #7 we skipped to 11, then 13, 14, up to 18, and ending back at 15. A bit confusing, but we learned quite a bit.

Here are a few interesting facts:
1. Houndsditch (street) is so named because it runs the line of the old defense ditch outside the Wall. This became a dumping area for rubbish including dead dogs, hence “hounds ditch.”
2. Moorgate was the only gate named for its location. Walbrook stream once ran through London, but was impeded by the Roman wall when it was built. This created a moor, or marsh, north of the wall in that area.
3. Cripplegate was later used as a prison.
4. The western portion of the Wall surrounding the Roman Fort actually saved the suburbs outside from being destroyed by the Great Fire in 1666. Much of London within the wall was destroyed.
5. Panel 8 was destroyed by an IRA bomb in 1993.

To read more about the London Wall and walk, click here.

If you’d like to see the route we took,

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