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Click here if you wish to see the Interactive Town Maps or here to see Coventry's changing boundary.
Using the information available, principally Eileen Gooder's book "Coventry's Town Wall", I have attempted to make each section of the wall correspond as closely as possible to the stated year.
One area where historical facts remain rather sketchy is the section of wall running north from Gosford gate towards the wall's probable finishing point about one hundred yards short of Mill Lane gate. It is known that the stretch from the Whitefriar's round tower in the south east corner started its northward run after 1430 but it can only be estimated that the continuation of this anticlockwise building towards the final 'join' was made during the twenty year spell when the Prior was in disagreement with the Corporation over various grievances. (1480 to 1500.)
Putting a date to the building of many of the gates is also difficult. Most of the positions eventually occupied by gates were protected by some manner of defence long before the walling took place and it is apparent that the gates were not built in synchronisation with the progress of the wall. In 1423, an order was given to build Hill Street gate and to begin when possible the building of all, as yet unbuilt, gates and provide doors for any still without.
According to Eileen Gooder, the original intention was for the wall to be built in a completely clockwise direction, and in the early stages progress was good, with the wall being paid for by the wealthier men of the Earl's southerly half of the town. However, when the wall reached the area controlled by the Prior in the north, progress slowed.
Realizing that it would be an apparent eternity before their land was secured by the wall, an agreement was reached in 1365 between the Whitefriars and Richard Stoke, a wealthy merchant. The residents of the Mill Lane and Gosford Street region were to pool their resources with the Whitefriars and begin the anticlockwise building of the wall. Despite this agreement, it was nearly sixty years before a start was actually made and work finally began in 1423 with the building of the "Lady Tower" which was directly south of the Whitefriars monastery and the first tower in an anticlockwise direction from New Gate.
Despite much of the evidence put forward by Eileen Gooder, it is apparent from archaeology undertaken in the 20th century, that much of the reference to the building of the wall was actually a re-building of it, or in some cases, a realignment from its original position. I intend to expand on this evidence more fully, in due course.
