Town Walls Research Articles

Medieval Democracy in the Brandenburg Towns and its Defeat in the Fifteenth Century: The Alexander Prize Essay

At the time of the so-called German colonisation to the east of the Elbe, German merchants and artisans entered the Brandenburg Mark, whose rivers, woods, and marshes stretched from the Old Mark to the west of the Elbe to the New Mark to the east of the Oder. The immigrants brought with them the economic methods and social organisation of their homeland. Town life, self-government, and trade quickly developed everywhere, whether the new town was established on an uninhabited site, or on the site of a Slavonic village which gave its name to the new settlement, or a walled town or fortress of the Slavs was transformed into a German town.

A Morphological Study of Peking

This article is based on observations and data collected during my visit to Peking in the autumn of 1938. 1) Peking as the capital of the Han-culture. (Han is the crown name of cultural China) _??_pp. 213-18_??_. Important descriptions: (A) Town wall and the reason why it has been required, on the contrary to Japanese towns which have had no, wall _??_p. 241-_??_. (B) Races which set Peking as their capital were the Manchurians Mongolian, and Turkistan people, but town planning of Peking has been derived of Chow, and has very intimate relation to Chang-an and Loyang, two old capitals of the proper chinese states. 2) The Plan of Peking _??_pp. 218-25_??_ (A) The difference between Peking or Fengtien and Kyôto or Changan as to the situation of imperial palace (Fig. 1, 2, 3) (B) Compari-sion of the length of wall on 5 different maps of Peking _??_p. 220-_??_. (C) Classification of roads _??_p. 222-_??_: (i) Tache (Large street), (ii) Che (Street), (iii) Hoton (Side street, most developed name of mongolian origin), Kow, and etc., (iv) Fang, Wan., Kan, and etc. (these mean engulfed places). (D) Systems of roads (Fig. 9).: (a) Regular Hoton-system, (b) Irregular system composed of roads of (iii) and (iv) types (c) Pseudo radial system in the south castle 3) The Elevation of Peking _??_pp. 225-230_??_ Peking is called the capital of Sophora which, mixed with other trees such as ulms and willows, make a green ocean when, one views from Chingshan at the north end of the Tzu-chin-chemg palace. Important descriptions: (A) Residential houses _??_p. 225-_??_, one house-type, Su-ho-fang is illustrated in Fig. 10. (B) Retail streets _??_p. 226-_??_. After the classification of Japan Commercial and Industrial Congress, varieties of shops in. Wong-pu-ching near the Legation quarter re-sembles to Ginza in Tôkyô, showing a cosmopolitan character compared to Dahshi-lan, the most thriving retail centre in Peking, of which shops are almost typical Chinese (Fig. 12). 4) The increase of population from 1925 to 35, is 24.2% and in the year of 1935 it amounts to 1, 573, 200 of which 1.1 million live in the wall and others are in suburbs. Kyôto and Nagoya, one million cities in Japan are able to be compared to Peking-proper, but they show 30.8% and 41.7, increase respectively in the same period. The comparision of occupational population is described in page 231 (see the table), and it shows that Peking has a very small percentage, of manu-facturing population, i. e. 7.7%. In near future Peking will be enlarged in the suburb for the use of manufacture and residence.

LONDON WALL THROUGH EIGHTEEN CENTURIES: a history of the ancient Town Wall of the City of London, with a survey of the existing remains. By Walter G. Bell, F. Cottrill and Charles Spon. Issued for the Council for Tower Hill improvement, 30 Trinity Square, E.C. 3. pp. 124, 70 figs. and map. 3s 6d.

LONDON WALL THROUGH EIGHTEEN CENTURIES: a history of the ancient Town Wall of the City of London, with a survey of the existing remains. By Walter G. Bell, F. Cottrill and Charles Spon. Issued for the Council for Tower Hill improvement, 30 Trinity Square, E.C. 3. pp. 124, 70 figs. and map. 3s 6d. - Volume 12 Issue 48

Roman Dorchester

ON September 26 the foundation stone of the new Shire Hall in Colliton Park, Dorchester, was laid by Lord Shaftesbury. This building is probably unique in Great Britain in that it is the first to be erected on the site since Roman times, and also because there will stand near by, permanently preserved, one of the residential buildings of the Roman town of Durnovaria, brought to light by the excavations of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, which were initiated under the direction of Lieut. -Colonel C. D. Drew when attention was directed to the existence of Roman remains at this point by the preparations for building. Further discoveries are still being made. Colonel Drew records the discovery of a fine tessellated pavement of geometrical design. It had been broken in ancient times, and in the fracture was found a delicate Roman balance in bronze, which probably had been used for goldsmith's work. The beam was three inches long only. One of the pans was intact, the other in fragments. The pavement is to be removed to the adjacent Roman dwelling, and the balance has been set up in the Dorchester Museum. Further work in the examination of the neighbouring town wall in the North Walk reveals that on this side there was no stone Wall, such as Was found recently below Colliton Walk. Here an earthen rampart had the natural reinforcements of the river and marshy ground.

Roman Dorchester

RESUMED excavation on behalf of the Dorset Archælogical Society on the site at Colliton Park, Dorchester, which has been purchased by the County Council for the erection of a shire hall, has already produced several discoveries (The Times, March 3). It will be remembered that last year, when excavation began, a large Roman town house was discovered belonging to the Roman city of Durnovaria which underlies the modern town. This has been completely excavated and is to be preserved intact by the County Council. Trial trenches have now revealed that four important Roman buildings underlie the area upon which the shire hall is to be erected. These it is hoped to examine. A well-made path of cobble flints leading to the door of the house has been brought to light. It overlies an earlier wooden cookhouse, furnished with an oven. A large pit was also found. This was circular in plan and lined with blocks of stone. It is fourteen feet in diameter and sixteen feet deep. A passage to the west leads to the Roman town wall. Excavations will be continued for a further period of at least three months.

The Ruined Towns of Somaliland

Periodical reference to the ‘Mysterious Ruined Cities of Somaliland’, citing them as an ‘unsolved riddle of Africa’, have appeared in books and articles from time to time. The majority of these ruined towns lie in the west of British Somaliland, within the present administrative district of Borama, or across the frontier in the adjacent areas of Ethiopia, roughly half way between the ancient port of Zeila and the walled town of Harar. The Somalis of today can throw no light on their history.A series of investigations were carried out by Captain R. H. R. Taylor and myself during the week-ends available in 1934. The sites of ten ruined towns were already more or less vaguely known, while eleven new sites, off the beaten track and overgrown with bush, in both Ethiopia and British Somaliland, were one by one traced and visited as leave permitted. Circumstances did not permit of excavation beyond the clearing out of two houses and the sinking of a trial trench across a refuse heap, but notes were made and a careful record kept of all surface finds. The representative collection of relics brought home and presented to the Department of Ethnology of the British Museum amounted to several thousand items, mostly fragmentary. The numerous types of objects were classified and made it possible to assign the period of occupation of the towns to the 15th and 16th centuries.

Archæological Investigations in Syria

SIR LEONARD WOOLLEY'S report on the work of the British Museum's archaeological expedition to Sueidia, near Antioch, immediately before closing down work for the season (The Times, July 31) records the completion of excavation in the reserved area of the harbour site and the cutting of trial trenches on and around the hill station at Sabounia, two and a half miles inland. At the latter point, while the existence of a walled town at least as early as the Mycenaean age is established, the fall of the walls through the disintegration of the sandstone cliffs, on the edge of which they were erected, has effectually disposed of the possibility of profitable excavation. Here, however, a find of vessels of copper and implements of bronze and iron has afforded instructive evidence of agricultural practice in Syria in the Byzantine age. At Sheikh Yusuf al Gharib further evidence was afforded of the activity of the port in the second half of the fourth century B.C., in the form of merchants' magazines, which had been burned, but had preserved a detailed picture of trade. A lamp store was stocked with lamps of both the imported and the locally made varieties, lamp fillers and Syrian oil bottles copying Greek models, while the stock of painted Attic aryballi bore witness to a common origin in common characteristics which made it possible to trace a definite shipment by a single firm and to date it within a few years. Gold and silver beads and silver coins of Athens, copper ingots and loose quicksilver marked a jeweller's shop. Back to the ninth century this is the most important Greek colony so far excavated. The absence of evidence from the earlier Mycenaean age is to be attributed to the forces of Nature, which have washed away the earlier portions of the site. Yet there is a link in a local copy of a Mycenaean vase and a single sherd of fine hand-made burnished black ware, which alone would suggest an earlier date. Though no inscription has been found, it is suggested that this is the ancient Posidium, mentioned by Herodotus as founded before the Mycenaean age.

A Bastion of the Town Wall of London, and the Sepulchral Monument of the Procurator Julius Classicianus

Excavations made in June 1935 for the foundations of a new sub-station of the London Passenger Transport Board at Trinity Place, Trinity Square, E.C., brought to light some remains of the Roman town wall of London. A large portion of the medieval superstructure is still standing on the east side of Trinity Place, and to the north of this the Inner Circle Railway runs in a cutting under the roadway. The construction of this cutting involved the removal of a length of 73 ft. of the wall in 1882 (R.C.H.M. Roman London, 83). The site of the discoveries to be described here was immediately behind the southern retaining wall of the cutting. Both faces of the Roman wall were exposed at this point, and could be examined in detail, and against the external face was a fragment of one of the later Roman bastions (pl. 1). These remains were investigated by the writer on behalf of this Society, and the Passenger Transport Board kindly granted all necessary facilities, and rendered every possible assistance.

Ancient Ruins in East Africa

AN archaeological reconnaissance with the view of further investigation has been made recently by Dr. L. S. B. Leakey on two sites in East Africa. Of these, one, the ruins of Gedi, an ancient city of considerable extent, sixty-five miles north of Mombasa, is already scheduled under the Ancient Monuments Preservation Ordinance; the other is the large assemblage of stone-built dwelling-places and tombs at Engaruka in the Great Rift Valley in Tanganyika, to which attention was directed as a new discovery in June last of Mr. T. E. Wetherell. The ruins at Gedi, though situated at no more than fifty yards from the Mombasa-Malindi road at their nearest point, are so obscured by a tangle of tropical vegetation as almost to escape notice. Trees of considerable size growing on or in the ruined structures afford some gauge of the antiquity of the ruins. According to Dr. Leakey's report (The Times, October 11) future investigation will reap a rich harvest. Town walls, buildings and tombs alike afford evidence of at least two, and possibly three, distinct periods of construction. The materials used consist of dressed blocks of coral, built up with a hard mortar and plastered to a smooth surface. In places, where the dressing is unplastered, as on the arches over doors and windows, it is extremely fine. It is Dr. Leakey's opinion that the ruins may be those of an Arab or Persian settlement of considerable antiquity, the first settlement possibly dating so far back as the beginning of the Christian era.

Macclesfield as a walled town

Macclesfield as a walled town

Excavations at Alchester, 1928

The primary object of the work of 1928 was to follow up the discovery in 1927 of the unexpectedly strong and heavy foundation underlying the north-east corner mound. As a result of this year's work it is evident that this corner mound represents some heavy structure which is best explained as a circular corner tower built into the town walls at their northeast angle; but even its foundations were so broken up that it was impossible to discover any outline or recover a complete ground plan. Oh the outside, instead of extending beyond the walls themselves, the circumference of the structure lay flush with the curved external angle of the walls, while on the inside its circumference projected slightly beyond the angle of the walls proper. It was thus rather an internal than an external tower, a fact which it is important to bear in mind.

Excavations at Ur, 1928–9

The seventh campaign of the Joint Expedition of the British Museum and of the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania at Ur started on October 24 1928, and continued until the end of February 1929. The Staff consisted of my wife, Mr. M. E. L. Mallowan, general assistant, and the Rev. E. Burrows, S.J., as epigraphist. Mr. Mallowan was detained in England by illness and did not join us in the field until early in December, up to which time my wife, in addition to doing all the drawings, was my sole field assistant, and subsequently continued to share with me the whole of the cemetery work of the season. The excavation of the graveyard area kept us busy during the greater part of the winter, and we dug 454 graves in all. By the end of January the area proposed for the current year had been exhausted, and attention was devoted to the strata underlying and bordering on the graveyard. It was this work that led to the discoveries connected with the Flood. On Mr. Mallowan's arrival more men were enrolled and set to work on the courtyard of the great Nannar Temple. By the middle of February this task also was completed, and finally, for the last ten days of the season, both gangs were drafted off for experimental work on the city walls of Ur. The results of the season therefore fall under four headings:I. The Cemetery.II. The buildings and rubbish-mounds of the pre-cemetery town and the evidence for the Flood.III. The Nannar Temple.IV. The Town Walls.

Excavations at Haliartos, 1926

A Permit was granted for the School to carry out a trial excavation at Haliartos in Boeotia with the object of establishing the plan of the ancient walls of the city and testing the future possibilities of the site.Digging was begun on March 30th on the west wall of the Acropolis—Mr. Woodward being present to direct operations for the first two days. Five men were employed at first, but after the opening week the number was raised to six.For about a fortnight the workmen were employed in determining the lines of the walls of the Acropolis. It was found impossible in the limited time available for the excavation to include the outer town walls in the investigation. For the second fortnight the men were chiefly engaged in excavating a sanctuary and adjacent buildings which were discovered within the Acropolis. Work was continued until April 28th.

Account of the Excavations on Traprain Law during the Summer of 1921

Further excavation recovered evidence of Neolithic and early Bronze Age activity in the form of stone and flint artefacts, followed by late Bronze Age and early Iron Age artefacts including socketed axes, terrets, glass beads, clay moulds and pins. There appears to have been a hiatus until the main occupation which spans the end of the 1st century to the early 5th century AD. Occasional levelling of the ground has led to the mixing of artefacts of different dates. Stone-built structures and hearths were identified. Numerous artefacts are reported on and include spindle whorls, pottery, glass and jet armlets, glass beads, slingstones, coins, gaming pieces, clay moulds and brooches. The site is identified as a walled town or oppidum.

The Walled Town of Aigues-Mortes

(1916). The Walled Town of Aigues-Mortes. Archaeological Journal: Vol. 73, No. 1, pp. 217-294.

Frankish Remains at Adalia

The city of Adalia on the Caramanian coast, still a very fine example of a mediaeval walled town, has been thrice attempted by western arms and was for twelve years garrisoned by the French kings of Cyprus.It was taken by Gautier de Montbeliard early in the reign of Hugues I. Lusignan (1205–18) but hurriedly abandoned. The warlike Pierre I. captured it in 1361 and it was held till 1373, when his successor, Pierre II. surrendered it. Lastly the ‘Crusaders’ of Mocenigo's expedition in 1472 stormed and sacked the seaward quarter but were unable to make good their footing. The surviving Frankish monuments must be attributed to the second Cypriote period.

Ancient walled towns

Ancient walled towns

Ancient walled towns

Journal Article Ancient walled towns Get access Thomas Laffan Thomas Laffan Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Notes and Queries, Volume s7-XI, Issue 286, 20 June 1891, Page 488, https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/s7-XI.286.488a Published: 20 June 1891

The Town Walls of Oxford

The Town Walls of Oxford

County aid to a Walled town

County aid to a Walled town