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Defending London
The Military Landscape from Prehistory to the Present
By Mike Osborne The History Press
Copyright © 2012 Mike Osborne
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7524-7931-6
CHAPTER 1
Prehistoric, Roman and Saxon London
Prehistoric London
Until a good while after the second Roman invasion, the site of what we now know as the City of London, if it existed at all, had little significance. It was not a tribal centre as Colchester was, it was not a centre of trade as St Albans may have been, and it was not a communications hub despite the fact that there is likely to have been a ford around Westminster, accompanied by a small settlement on one of the islands nearby.
The invasion of the Belgae around 100BC led to a greater density of population in the south-east, although not generally along the lower reaches of the Thames, however there was an increase in movement if not settlement in this area, with the ford and trackways opening the area up to traders. It is possible that the Old North Road was in use in pre-Roman times and this may have forded the Thames near Southwark where there have been finds of contemporary pottery. Another track may have run eastwards from around Windsor to cross the Lea at Walthamstow. The most likely centre of population in the London area at this time was in the south-west around Kew, Kingston and Richmond. Although signs of warlike activity have been found in the Thames, notably the magnificent Battersea Shield, dated to 300BC, these may simply indicate ceremonial sites where arms were deposited in the river as offerings to the spirits. Other finds however, which include a shield with a spear embedded in it, may be more tangible signs of actual conflict.
Iron Age settlements consisting of small clusters of roundhouses, perhaps enclosed by a ditch and a bank with a stockade as much to keep stock protected from wild animals as to keep the inhabitants safe from hostile tribes, tended to hug higher ground above river valleys. There were a number of larger settlements in the Greater London area, some of them meriting the status of what are generally known as hill forts. Caesars Camp at Holwood Park, Keston, is a large Iron Age hill fort, measuring 1 mile (1.6km) around its perimeter, and enclosing an area of 43 acres (17ha). It has a single bank and ditch (univallate) on the north side, but is bivallate on the west, its bank rising in places to 40ft (12m). The rest of its circuit of banks and ditches was destroyed by nineteenth-century landscaping. Uphall Camp in Ilford, another significant fortified enclosure in a strategic location, dominating Barking Creek and the Thames and possibly representing a high-status regional centre of the people who are remembered as the Trinovantes, is a large, univallate fort covering 60 acres (24ha). There is evidence for a double ditch along the side nearest to the River Roding, and in the interior, ring ditches signifying roundhouses and rectangular structures with post holes, dubbed 'four-posters' in the excavation report and interpreted as store houses, have been found. The rampart was up to 13ft (4m) in height, and the fort appears to date from the end of the Middle Iron Age. Loughton Camp was sited on a spur overlooking a tributary of the River Roding. Its oval univallate defences, with a ditch 45ft (14m) wide, enclose an area of 6.5 acres (3ha). Another small fort, also now in Epping Forest, was Amresbury Banks, a plateau camp with a ditch 10ft (3m) deep and 22ft (6.5m) wide. At the Woolwich Power Station site, roundhouses were found surrounded by massive ditches.
Roman London
Britain was subject to two Roman invasions nearly a century apart. The first was little more than a punitive reconnaissance in force, aimed at warning off the British tribes that were seen to be backing resistance to Rome across the Channel in Gaul. In 54BC, after an initial barely opposed landing, Julius Caesar met stiffer opposition from Cassivelaunus, who had been given command of the temporarily united tribes. His troops skirmished with the Romans, perhaps in the vicinity of Westminster or the future London Bridge site, defending a ford and a riverbank fortified with sharpened stakes. Having no more than interrupted the Roman advance, Cassivelaunus was defeated after the Roman army stormed his main hill fort, probably Wheathamstead on the River Lea near St Albans.
The second invasion was in AD43 when a Roman army of perhaps as many as 30–50,000 troops under Aulus Plautius landed at Richborough. The Roman army advanced through Kent defeating the Britons on the Medway in a battle lasting two days, pushing them back on London, where the Britons crossed the wide and shallow Thames by secret fords. The Romans camped south of the river, where they were joined by the Emperor Claudius. The army forced a crossing, defeating the Britons who retreated into the trackless wastes of Hackney Marshes and the boggy area around the mouth of the River Lea, possibly attempting to lure the Romans to follow. Further Roman successes resulted in the capture of Colchester and a speedy end to British resistance.
Morris suggests that a Roman army of 50,000 men would have had detachments guarding the 80-mile long (128km) lines of communication back to the coast, and also defending bridgeheads north of the Thames. While it was generally accepted that there had been no attempt to fortify the site in the early days, evidence has been unearthed of a double-ditched enclosure with characteristically military features on the eastern bank of the Walbrook with a corresponding northern section at Bishopsgate; defences that had been slighted by AD50. A further, apparently contemporary, but much smaller ditched enclosure found at Park Street in Southwark may represent a camp associated with the first arrival of the legions at the site, tying in with what appears to have been a marching camp on Blackheath on the Dover road. This, and other Roman roads, may have been laid down before a permanent bridge was built. The line of Watling Street clears the river via Marble Arch, apparently running north from a possibly temporary Westminster crossing near the present Houses of Parliament. This may have been on a long-established site of a ford or a pontoon bridge, and there might have been another bridge or a ferry upstream around Chelsea, Putney or Battersea. The level of the river was much lower than it is now, possibly only up to 40ft (14m) at its maximum depth. The island of Westminster is a likely place for a Roman pontoon bridge, enabling the army to cross in pursuit of the retreating Britons in AD43, and making it possible to establish a secure bridgehead.
Around AD47–55 London was established on a green-field site east of any previous settlement and the road alignments were altered accordingly. The first permanent bridge was built near the present London Bridge, and massive timbers forming the base for a bridge pier, dated to AD85–90, have been found on the north bank at Fish Street Hill. Roman London began life primarily as a supply depot but was already a large settlement by AD61, when it was sacked. Following the death of her husband, Boudicca the Iceni queen and her daughters were disinherited by the Romans and raised a rebellion. Most of the Roman troops under Suetonius were occupied in Anglesey putting down the Druids, so the Iceni, who had meanwhile destroyed the towns of St Albans and Colchester and defeated the Ninth Legion, had a clear run at London, their third major target. Suetonius hurriedly marched on London with not many more than 10,000 troops against possibly 120,000 tribesmen. Judging his forces too weak to resist the Iceni on ground not of his choosing, he evacuated as many as would leave. London, without walls, was virtually undefended and the Iceni slaughtered the inhabitants and fired the buildings. Evidence from this conflagration points to population clusters astride the Walbrook stream, around the Bank of England, along the Colchester road through Aldgate, and on the South Bank. Numbers of the dead at the three towns together are estimated at upwards of 70,000, as reported by Tacitus writing from eyewitness accounts. Suetonius then brought the Britons to battle, defeating them somewhere to the north of St Albans and, although some resistance continued, Boudicca chose suicide.
London had been obliterated and very little happened on the site for ten years while Roman efforts went into the conquest of the rest of Britannia. Evidence of a double-ditched enclosure at Plantation House to the east of the Monument, suggests a post-Boudiccan fort, built to protect urgent rebuilding works that were carried out on the port facilities. This fort itself had been built over within a generation, covering hundreds of skulls that may have been evidence of Roman retribution. By the end of the first century the main road network had been laid down with London not only as one of its major nodal points but also representing the most important port of the province. A period of peace and consolidation provided an opportunity for London to develop as the most impressive of Roman towns in Britain, a worthy home for the provincial government. The earliest Roman settlement appears to have been around Leadenhall. A V-shaped ditch found on the eastern side of the Baltic Exchange site in St Mary Axe was dated to the first century and was 7ft (2.1m) deep and 13ft (4m) wide. It may represent an early defensive ditch or boundary and had been in-filled between AD130 and AD150, at the time the settlement began to expand.
Early in the second century, a stone-walled fort was built at Cripplegate, covering an area of 12 acres (5ha), and over the years opportunities to explore surviving parts have presented themselves through bomb damage to surrounding buildings or redevelopment. The fort apparently escaped damage in the fire of the AD120s, soon after it was built. It was the usual playing-card shape with walls 4ft (1.2m) thick, a gate in the middle of each side and an internal turret at each corner. The wall was around 15ft (4.5m) high and had a rampart walk accessed by small, square turrets placed at intervals on the inside of the walls. The base of the northern part of the fort's west gate survives in the underground car park by the Museum of London. It consisted of twin arches in-between two-storey projecting towers containing guard chambers. Wood Street was the main north-south thoroughfare of the fort leading to the north gate, which became the mediaeval Cripplegate. Traces of Roman barrack rooms have been excavated either side of the road. The fort was large enough to accommodate around 1500 men, and this would have included a force acting as police commanded by the legatus iuridicus, an officer of the civil authority. They were probably auxiliaries but may have included detachments of legionaries. Additionally, the fort accommodated troops in transit on the road to or from Richborough, and soldiers who needed to be in London on official business. London's population variously peaked at 30,000 or 45–60,000 in around AD140–150.
During the rebellion of Clodius Albinus and the reign of his nemesis Septimius Severus (190–210), London's strategic importance increased over its commercial significance, and it needed some proper defences beyond the existing isolated fort. London Wall was built by AD225, using some 85,000 tons of Kentish rag stone, brought from the Maidstone area in, it has been estimated, around 1300 barge loads. Running in six straight lengths, two of which were formed by the western and northern walls of the pre-existing fort, London's Roman walls did not initially extend along the waterfront. The wall was 21ft (6.5m) high and 9ft (2.7m) thick, with a sentry walk on top and a V-shaped ditch 14ft (4.2m) wide and 5ft 6in (1.6m) deep. It has been suggested that the ditch, an obstacle of no great consequence, may have been water-filled from the various streams and rivers. The wall enclosed 240 acres (96ha), and was 3 miles (4.8km) long, making London the largest walled town in Roman Britain. At its north-west angle, these walls took in the fort whose wall, being thinner than the new wall, had to be doubled in thickness on the west and north. Four gates were built in the new walls – Ludgate, Aldgate, Bishopsgate and Newgate – the last, excavated in 1909, was shown to have had a double roadway running between two projecting towers containing guard chambers. That to the north projected 18ft (5.5m), but the southerly one projected only 8ft (2.5m). Aldersgate, to the west of the fort, was cut through the wall a little later than the rest, perhaps when the fort's West Gate was blocked up, and the existing north gate of the fort became Cripplegate. The projecting towers of these Roman gates may have been adapted to carry artillery at the same time that bastions were added to the walls. As well as the massive catapults, siege towers and battering rams used by the Roman army in the field, a range of lighter catapults firing bolts, stones or fire pots was available for mounting on the towers of forts and towns in a defensive role. Roman town defences in their final form were often the result of many decades, if not centuries of piecemeal development. An earthen bank and ditch with perhaps a palisade might have had stone gateways substituted for timber ones. Then the bank could have been cut back for a stone wall to be inserted, and then thickened to take a fighting platform. A final addition may have been the addition of external bastions to the face of the wall, which were sometimes bonded into the existing masonry
The end of the second century and the first decades of the third saw raids from the sea for slaves and portable treasure carried out by bands of deserters that were ultimately defeated by imperial power on land and sea. The danger from raiders sailing up-river was clearly anticipated, as a late third-century signal tower has been found at Shadwell. This may have been one of a chain, built to warn of approaching raiders. It was a square, stone tower within a ditched enclosure, a fairly common late-Roman structure. There is a suggestion that Uphall Camp at Ilford had later Roman occupation, possibly of a military nature, as the corner of a ditch has been discovered, possibly suggesting another signal tower, but there is nothing conclusive. London's later defences were built in the context of further imperial power struggles. Carausius ruled Britannia outside the Roman Empire in 286–293, and was then assassinated by Allectus who ruled until 296, when he was killed by his own troops, Frankish mercenaries who, on fleeing to London after their defeat near Silchester (Hampshire), were narrowly prevented from sacking the city by Constantius Chlorus, who arrived by ship in the nick of time and slaughtered them. Constantius then restored Britannia to imperial rule, and Londoners would have witnessed part of this denouement when a battle was fought in the Thames. A small sailing vessel has been discovered near Westminster Bridge, and it appears to have been sunk by heavy stones being thrown or fired into it, possibly by catapult. The signal towers were part of a wider system of coast defence based on a chain of forts such as Walton-on-the-Naze (Essex) and Reculver (Kent), which protected the coast and the approaches to the Thames Estuary.
Continual raids by Irish, Picts, Franks and Saxons caused chaos, culminating in the disastrous events of 367 when Nectaridus, count of the Saxon Shore and responsible for coast defences and the Roman fleet, was killed by raiders, and a Roman army was badly mauled in an ambush. Count Theodosius was despatched with an army from Spain in time to restore order and to expel the invaders, and it was probably this episode that prompted an urgent attempt to strengthen London Wall. As happened at other places throughout the empire, this was achieved, under Valentinian, by the addition to the eastern walls of solid D-shaped bastions, roughly 180ft (55m) apart. These were up to 30ft (9m) in height, and probably capable of mounting light artillery. Possibly symptomatic of the urgency of this operation, attempts had been made to bond only two of the new bastions into the existing wall. The most westerly was Bastion 11, under All Hallows church, and there appears to have been some reliance placed on the marshy valley of the Walbrook as a natural obstacle. Fields of fire seem to have been cleared for the artillery, and the original ditch was filled in, with a wider and deeper one being dug in its stead. In addition to these new bastions, excavations in 1976–77 found that a riverside wall had finally been built of small blocks of rag stone held together by internal timber lacing, the whole built on piles on the unstable riverbank. Once again, such was the urgency here that any available materials, including an early third-century commemorative arch and tombstones, were all used. Where the line of the Roman wall now runs to the east of the White Tower, there is evidence for an internal turret, and this may be much earlier than the bastions, one of which formed the basis for the twelfth-century Wardrobe Tower. A strongpoint may have been formed in this south-east angle of the Roman defences, protecting the riverside approaches. It has been suggested, partly on the basis of the intervals between them, and partly from excavation, that the mediaeval towers along the waterfront – the Lanthorn, Wakefield and Bell Towers – may have been built on top of Roman bastions. To the west of the Lanthorn Tower there is evidence for a postern or sally port, set in a re-entrant angle of the Roman wall and opening onto the quayside, and stone floors, possibly dating from the fifth century, have been uncovered nearby.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Defending London by Mike Osborne. Copyright © 2012 Mike Osborne. Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
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