Medieval City Wall, With Burial Ground

UPPER BOROUGH WALLS 656-1/40/1726 (North side) Medieval city wall, with burial ground

(Formerly Listed as: UPPER BOROUGH WALLS (North side) Medieval Wall of City) 12/06/50

GV I

Short length of north wall of the mediaeval city, enclosing former burial ground to the Bath General Hospital on opposite side of street. C15, and 1736; much restored in late C19. MATERIALS: Rubble, limewashed to rear, dressed stone copings. EXTERIOR: Wall rises c1.5m from pavement, and in seven bays, with wide merlons to high double-weathered saddleback copings, and deep embrasures. To left wall abuts No.18A, Upper Borough Walls (qv), and to right returned, with short length of later ashlar wall, to gateway abutting No.11, Trim Street (qv). Steps lead down to long narrow burial ground, wall to rear c3.5m high. At end of enclosed space wall carrying tablet inscribed: "This piece of ground was in the year/1736 set apart for the burial of/patients dying in the Bath General/Hospital and after receiving 238/bodies was closed by the Governors/of that Charity in the year 1849/from regard to the health of the/living". HISTORY: This stretch of wall, surrounded as it is by C18 and later Development, forms a rare and important survival from medieval Bath, a substantially walled city until the late C17. The walls probably followed the course of the Roman walls; the enclosed area, at twenty-four acres, is among the smallest walled towns in the country. The late Victorian restoration has left them in a picturesque state. They were restored in comparatively recent years by Mr J H Hawkins' re Meehan, in 1905. A passage was cut through the wall in 1743 in order that coffins could be taken from the newly opened hospital to the burial ground, formal permission for the use of which was only granted in 1767. The burial ground has considerable historic interest for showing the revival of the Roman practice of extramural burial, but within an already crowded edge-of-town position. The high number of burials in the adjoining confined space is also notable. It was the location of the burial ground that saved this stretch of wall from demolition. Another stretch of wall survives in Orchard Street. SOURCES: Barry Cunliffe, 'The City of Bath' (1986), 78-80; Peter Davenport,Medieval Bath Uncovered' (2002), 126 ff.; Roger Rolls, `The Hospital of the Nation' (1988), 59. Scheduled Monument ref: OCN BA 114

Listing NGR: ST7494164888