Restorations of the Roman Wall

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But no good citizen of London would have regarded either of the city. More to their profit was the restoration in King John's reign, when (in Stow's words) "the Barons entring the City by Ealdgate, first tooke assurance of the Citizens, then brake into the Jewes houses, searched their coffers to fill their owne purses, and after with great diligence repaired the walles and gates of the Citie with stones taken from the Jewes broken houses."

Apart from the digging of the great medieval ditch, originally 70 feet broad, but by Stow's time "neglected and forced either to a verie narrow, and the same a flithie chanell, or altogether stopped up," the only important modification of the defences during the Middle Ages took place at the south-western corner.

There the Roman town wall had proceeded directly southwards from Ludgate to the Thames, passing through the site of The Times Office, where a piece of it was seen in 1855.

This sector was broken through in 1282 in order to enable the Black Friars to enlarge their adjacent convent, and a new wall, forming a salient towards the Fleet, was then constructed, with the aid of special tolls levied for the purpose by the Mayor and citizens under grant of Edward I.

Another work worth mentioning is the repair of the north wall between Aldgate and Aldersgate in the time of Edward IV., when the Mayor "caused the Moorefield to bee searched for clay, and Bricke thereof to be made."

A short stretch of the brick battlements thus built, with their diaper pattern now almost obliterated by London soot, can still be detected in the piece of half-buried wall which flanks the churchyard of St. Alphage, London wall.

Of the gates of the Roman city structural remains have been found at Newgate and, less certainly, at Aldersgate, Bishopsgate, and Aldgate. Ludgate and Cripplegate were probably also of Roman origin.

The medieval and later successors of all these gates, together with other gates and posters at Moorgate, Aldermanbury, Christ's Hospital, and elsewhere, survived various destructions until about 1760, when they were finally demolished.