Town Wall around Pool Meadow

he original line of the wall between Mill Lane and Swanswell gates was rather different to the finished product seen laid out in John Speed's map of 1610.
The original route taken by the wall, before it was re-routed to encompass the Prior's land, is shown by the finely dotted line in the small map on the right. From Mill Lane Gate, the wall continued westward within yards of the south side of the river (approximately underneath where now Fairfax Street now lies), and shortly after passing where Priory Street now exists the wall appears to have taken a diagonal line north-westwards across the meadow to join up with Priory Gate.

However, in 1462 Prior Shotswell made complaints to the council, one of which expressed his annoyance at fish being stolen from the his pool (then known as St. Osburg's pool, now Pool Meadow). At the request of the Prior (and much heated debate), the wall was diverted at great expense to enclose the pool.

In the 1930's, while much alteration was happening around the centre of Coventry, John Bailey Shelton took the opportunity to excavate many sites, and he discovered the remains of a tower at the junction with Hales Street and what used to be the entrance to New Buildings. This tower would nowadays be approximately at the entrance to Sainsbury's at the bottom of Trinity Street. According to J. B. Shelton, this was known as "Priory Tower". Although possibly not part of the outer city wall, it might have been an inner tower or watch tower, possibly used as an armoury.

If you wish to read about this, and much more about John Bailey Shelton's numerous excavations, you may like to read his 1930's Austin's Monthly Magazine articles, the complete collection of which I have published online here with kind permission from his family.

The heavily dotted line in the mini-map above shows the later rebuild to encompass the Prior's pool. This area was to become the Pool Meadow with which we are now familiar after being drained from the marsh land that it had become by the early 19th century.

The beautiful view of 1809 on the left shows the land across Pool Meadow, looking southward towards the churches of St. Michael's and Holy Trinity.

If you'd like to see how this view compares with today's scene, please click here to see a now and then pairing.