Roman Wall
The bastions on the Roman wall here in the west side of the city are medieval in origin. The Romans themselves added some bastions on the eastern section of the wall, but here in the west they probably felt that the Fleet River, which ran very near the wall, was sufficient protection.
85,000 tons of Kentish ragstone were shipped down the Medway from Maidstone, along the coast and up the tidal Thames in 1300 barges to build the wall. This calculation was made possible by the finding of a fully laden barge in the Thames near the western end of the wall in 1962.
The Western Gate
Below the street known now as London Wall, in an anonymous room in a car park, is the old Western Gate to the Cripplegate Fort.
This was built in 125AD with two square towers. The northern tower contained a guardroom and access to the sentry walk. Between the two towers was a gravel road divided into two lanes.
The exterior of the gate, like the wall, would have been in dressed stone, with a ragstone interior filling.
The section of wall strengthening added in 200AD is clearly visible, as are the grooves worn into the stones by the repeated opening and closing of the doors.
The Gate can be visited on specific days by arrangement with the Museum of London
Here, next to the church of St Anne and St Agnes, at the corner of Noble Street, is the south-west corner of the Cripplegate Fort. The section of wall here is the earliest built. The fort dates from about 120AD and contained accommodation for about 1000 of the 4000 Roman soldiers in Britain at the time.
This corner of the fort has a square guard tower and a clearly visible drainage gulley. It is easy to see here how the additional material was added outside the fort wall to strengthen it when the remainder of the landside wall was built in 200AD.
At this time the inner wall was removed, leaving the fort open towards the City itself, and the city wall went off eastwards from here to the new Aldersgate, which replaced the Western Gate of the fort itself.
From much later times we see the plaster on the wall, which would have been the inside of rooms in houses built against the wall in medieval and even Victorian times. The holes we can see set into the wall at various heights show where joists would have supported the different floors of the houses.
The wall is now a haven for wild flora including Oxford ragwort, creeping buttercup, rocket, bittercress and buddleia and brambles.
It is important to remember that this wall was a vital protection for the city, and largely defined the shape of the City of London from 200AD until the 1700s, when the city began to expand outwards. The whole wall enclosed some 330 acres of land and stood around 18 feet high.