The 12 Gates of our Town Wall

Beginning near Pool Meadow and moving anticlockwise around Coventry, the twelve gates were:

• Swanswell gate (previously known as Priory gate) - completed c1440, still standing.
• Cook Street gate (sometimes referred to as Tower gate) - built c1385, still standing.
• Bishop gate (the Bishop's route out of Coventry to Lichfield) - demolished 1764.
• Well Street gate.
• Hill Street gate - built c1395, rebuilt 1423.
• Spon gate (also called Bablake gate) - built 1372 - demolished 1771.
• Greyfriars gate (The main route to Warwick) - demolished 1781.
• Cheylesmore gate.
• Little Park gate - described as "in ruins" on Bradford's 1749 map of Coventry.
• New gate (entrance to the London Road; the first gate to be built.) - demolished 1762.
• Gosford gate - demolished in 1765.
• Mill Lane gate (originally known as Bastille gate) - rebuilt 1512-14 - demolished 1849.

Although the demolition date has not been recorded for every gate, in 1810 William Reader stated that Bastille gate (Mill Lane), plus the still extant Swanswell and Cook Street gates, were the only ones remaining. It seems quite likely, however, that the two minor gates of Well Street and Hill Street were at least partly demolished along with the slighting of the wall in 1662. Cheylesmore gate is the only major one that I cannot yet find a demolition date for.

See the 1610 map of Coventry to find out how the wall and gates were arranged. In this modern day map you can see the exact course that the wall would have taken had it still been standing today. I have highlighted the surviving sections of the wall in red and linked each of them to the relevant parts in this section so that you can easily locate the remains for yourselves using the photographs.

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