MEDIEVAL CITY WALL, WITH BURIAL GROUND

MEDIEVAL CITY WALL, WITH BURIAL GROUND, UPPER BOROUGH WALLS

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Overview

Heritage Category:: Listed Building
Grade:: I
List Entry Number:: 1395446
Date first listed:: 12-Jun-1950
List Entry Name:: MEDIEVAL CITY WALL, WITH BURIAL GROUND
Statutory Address:: MEDIEVAL CITY WALL, WITH BURIAL GROUND, UPPER BOROUGH WALLS

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Official list entry

Heritage Category:: Listed Building
Grade:: I
List Entry Number:: 1395446
Date first listed:: 12-Jun-1950
Date of most recent amendment:: 15-Oct-2010
List Entry Name:: MEDIEVAL CITY WALL, WITH BURIAL GROUND
Statutory Address 1:: MEDIEVAL CITY WALL, WITH BURIAL GROUND, UPPER BOROUGH WALLS

This List entry helps identify the building designated at this address for its special architectural or historic interest.

Unless the List entry states otherwise, it includes both the structure itself and any object or structure fixed to it (whether inside or outside) as well as any object or structure within the curtilage of the building.

For these purposes, to be included within the curtilage of the building, the object or structure must have formed part of the land since before 1st July 1948.

Understanding list entries

Corrections and minor amendments

This List entry helps identify the building designated at this address for its special architectural or historic interest.

For these purposes, to be included within the curtilage of the building, the object or structure must have formed part of the land since before 1st July 1948.

Understanding list entries

Corrections and minor amendments

Location

Statutory Address:: MEDIEVAL CITY WALL, WITH BURIAL GROUND, UPPER BOROUGH WALLS

The building or site itself may lie within the boundary of more than one authority.

District:: Bath and North East Somerset (Unitary Authority)
Parish:: Non Civil Parish
National Grid Reference:: ST 74941 64888

Details

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

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:: 510850
Legacy System:: LBS

Legal

This building is listed under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 as amended for its special architectural or historic interest.