

ROMANO-BRITISH LEICESTERSHIRE 



that it served as a guard-house, but it is too shallow for any wall to have 

 inclosed it for this purpose. The northern arch is much narrower than the 

 others. The back wall is pierced by two loops, evidently intended for the 

 purpose of watching the approaches. The height of the arches is 19 ft., 

 the wall above them another 6ft., making altogether 25ft. to the rampart- 

 walk about the usual height of Roman city-walls in this country. To this 

 must be added 4 ft. for the height of the parapet walls and embrasures. 



'The wall is of the usual construction, viz. the body composed of rubble 

 having a facing of small squared stones banded at short intervals by wide 

 bonding or lacing courses of tiles. All the arches are turned with tile. No 

 doubt a ditch ran in front of it, access to the gateway being obtained by 

 wooden trestle-bridges on to each portal. Similar arrangements have been 

 noted at the two posterns of the town wall at Silchester (Ca//eva Attrebatuni) , 

 and the gate in the Roman wall of London, known in mediaeval times as 

 Aldersgate, was reached across the moat in the same way. A road led up 

 to the gate of Ratae from the direction of Watts Causeway, which connected 

 the town with the Fosse Way. 



' The date of this gate cannot be fixed with certainty, but perhaps it may 

 have been erected under Constantine. The late Mr. J. H. Parker judged it of 

 that period, being guided to his opinion by the size of the tiles and thickness 

 of the mortar joints of the bonding courses ; but Roman construction in 

 Rome, on which he based his judgement, does not always give the rule for 

 similar work in Britain. Possibly a safer guide to date may be found in the 

 narrowness of the gateways only 7 ft. 6 in. and their distance apart, for 

 the later in date a fortified inclosure may be, the narrower are the entrances. 

 In fact, the two portals in the Jewry Wall have more the appearance of a 

 couple of posterns side by side than one of the main entrances to a city. 

 The best idea of what this gateway was like is to be obtained from the views 

 in Stukeley's Itinerarium Curiosum. The elaborate drawing to scale made by 

 Mr. A. Hall in 1870, in the possession of the Leicester Architectural and 

 Archaeological Society, shows all that we are likely to know of this relic of 

 Roman Leicester. It has been reproduced in vol. viii of the Transactions of 

 the society, and from it the plan and elevation here given has been made. It 

 is a satisfaction that so excellent a record has been made of one of the few 

 remains of Roman antiquity standing above ground, as to whose ultimate 

 fate it would be hazardous to venture a prediction. Wrecked, not by time 

 but by the hand of man, with blocked portals and its western side covered 

 by workshops, while the eastern is more than half hidden by a pathway, 

 it is no wonder that it has proved a puzzle to antiquaries until excavations 

 and more careful research than was formerly possible had revealed the true 

 character of the remains.' 



Judging by the structural details of the Jewry Wall, already referred to, 

 the town walls of Ratae were probably erected at a late date of the Roman 

 occupation. Mr. Haverfield has pointed out that in the western provinces of 

 the empire, town walls seem to have been principally erected after A.D. 250, 

 when the barbarian invasions grew formidable, 10 but this would not probably 

 have affected Britain till a later date, as the reason for the building of walls 

 here was as a protection against the attacks caused by local disturbances in 



10 V.C.H. Somers. 1,228. 

 I 185 24 



