Last updated 05:33, Friday, 25 July 2008

Writing about the medieval city walls of Carlisle, RS Ferguson said in 1882, these “have all disappeared except the western curtain wall.”

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Long gone: The Irish Gate. This part of the wall was demolished in 1811 and replaced today by the Irish Gate Bridge

In an earlier account he said: “This section of the wall, from the Irish Gate to the Citadel is almost perfect but is concealed by houses built against it in many parts.”

Nearer the English Gate, said Ferguson, the wall “is concealed by warehouses”.

Today, as something unique in Cumbria and a rare survival, the West Walls deserve a proper archaeological survey, but Bulmer’s Directory in 1901 explained the difficulty. “So patched is the west curtain of Carlisle, by repeated repairs of every date, that no sound conclusion can be come to.”

No reconstruction of the West Walls was necessary until in 1745 the Duke of Cumberland fired cannons from a battery in Caldcotes in attempting to retake the city from Bonnie Prince Charlie’s men.

Although aiming for the castle, a number of the Duke’s stray rounds hit the West Walls.

A map of this period, prepared by the Board of Ordnance to show the defects in the walls, had a bulge between the Irish Gate and the Abbey, against which was written “in the wall will speedy be a breach and must be taken down.”

Evidence of these repairs comes from a letter sent by Matilda Gilpin to her husband in June 1746.

She said she had a much better view from her closet window in the Deanery, because “the town wall is almost level with the ground.”

Below she had counted 10 or 12 workmen and some of the invalid soldiers from the Castle who were rebuilding it.

Mrs Gilpin hoped it would be rebuilt “just as it was,” but when she consulted the engineer in charge, Leonard Smelt, he said “he believed there will be some alteration”.

The presence of such an eminent engineer as Mr Smelt signified that the repair of castle and city walls was a major undertaking in 1746.

Smelt had been responsible for fortifications in Newfoundland, the barracks at Tynemouth and with defences at the mouth of the Tyne.

Contemporary accounts deal only with repairs to the castle, but in 1773 Francis Grose retrospectively wrote: “The breaches caused by the Duke’s battering are now repaired.”

To provide stone to enable this work to be done at little cost, the inner part of the West Walls nearest the castle “has been stripped of its facing”, said Grose. Later this was rebuilt in brick.

The city walls were acquired by the county magistrates, to provide stone to build the Court Houses and the Carlisle Journal reported in May 1811: “The business of demolishing our old ruinous walls proceeds with spirit, the Irish Gates are taking down.”

But the West Walls were saved by the intervention of Dean Milner in that year, who according to his biography, “vigorously opposed the dismantling of the city walls in the neighbourhood of the Deanery”.

Once the responsibility for the walls passed from the county to the city in 1814, further improvements were planned to provide a road behind the remaining part.

The Journal reported in September: “The rubbish and part of the wall at the Irish Gate, which had so long remained a nuisance to the neighbourhood, have been removed and workmen are now employed in clearing the whole line of road from thence to the Court Houses.”

Before 1745 the crenellation on the West Walls had been removed, making it dangerous to pedestrians.

Mishaps were frequent and the Journal noted that “a railing or some other security against accident” was necessary.

So, in the work of 1814, the newspaper reported: “A parapet is building the whole length.”

In other places said the Journal “where the ancient wall is decayed it is repairing”.

A further safety measure was the addition of new Sallyport steps in 1824.

Buildings constructed against the wall in the 1840s and 50s did not necessarily cause damage, except for the removal of the parapet, all now restored, but the realignment of the Caledonian Railway had disastrous results.

Reporting on the demolition of Irish Gate Brow, the Journal stated in May 1876: “In connection with the alterations in this part of town, Ship Lane and Ritson’s Lane have been destroyed and part of the old city walls have been taken down and rebuilt ... to make room for the new railway.”

Such was the state of the one remaining tower on the West Walls, the Tile Tower, that John Leech wrote to the Journal in 1876 asking “why the Government did not repair it?”

Here was the first awakening of civic pride. Mr Leech saw this as a disgrace of which the War Department “ought to be ashamed”.

Similar criticism in more recent times about weeds growing out of the West Walls near the Sallyport has resulted this summer in a programme of long-overdue pointing.