the city walls

The Bar Walls of York are the finest and most complete of any town in England. There are five main "bars" (big gateways), one postern (a small gateway), one Victorian gateway, and 45 towers. At two miles, they are also the longest town walls in the country.

The tan line on the old map below shows how the walls worked in 1610. The magenta line shows the remaining wall segments, most of which you can walk on. The lake, number 12 on the map, doesn't exist any more. They damned up the River Foss at one point to have a huge stocked fish pond for the King. The lake also served as a natural defense. Later on the water completely surrounded the motte of the old motte and bailey castle (near number 7 on the map). The river silted up over time and is now a sluggish, murky little canal, but people still fish in it.



Like most things in York, the walls have been added to and modified over the ages. The oldest parts date back to the Romans (71AD). In some areas, the "newer" medieval sections were built directly on the Roman wall. In other areas, they run parallel, and in yet other areas, they've been extended beyond the Roman walls. For the most part, the walls are around 13ft high and 6ft wide.


This picture shows the old Roman wall with the small blocks and brick stripe below the larger blocks of the more decorative medieval section. This tower is called the Multangular Tower because of the faceted sides. It's the only original Roman tower to survive. The stone coffins in the bottom are from a Roman graveyard excavation and are being stored there, but didn't come from there.

Bootham Bar, aka Monk Bar, is the only gate on the site of an original Roman one. Bootham is one of the few streets on top of a main Roman road and happens to be the one we take to York. It's said Bootham used to go up to Hadrian's wall.


You can walk through Monk Bar to get onto the prettiest section of wall. Inside you can see a portcullis aka big wood gate that used to drop down to block the entrance. This one is only decorative, but is impressive all the same.


Each bar has its own little personality as it was added to over the years. Some remain more of a pedestrian entrance, like Monk Bar which is only open to traffic at certain times of day, whereas others like Micklegate Bar are used for traffic all of the time. Of course it's only a one-way at a time system controlled by lights.


Walmgate Bar is the most complete of the York Bars. Not only does it have a working portcullis, it also has its inner door system and barbican. This was the highly sophisticated version of a medieval security check. The "guest" would be invited into the gated barbican, a long rectangular room with no roof. The door would close behind them and the next door would not open until the "guest" had passed inspection. This could be observed from a protected walkway on the top of the walls so they could shoot you full of arrows if you forgot to put your 3oz liquid in a clear, quart-size ziploc bag.


Once passing inspection, you were then permitted to enter the next set of doors beneath the tower. Not sure what happened in there, maybe the air puffer test? It was only then that you were permitted to go through the final set of doors and enter the city.


Back in the day, ditches that were 60ft wide and 10ft deep and ramparts that were 100ft wide and 30ft high added additional defensive reinforcement to the walls. Very little of that can be seen today, but here's an idea of what it must have looked like.


The defensive geniuses of York even devised ways of controlling the River Ouse. At one point, they had two sets of chains strung across it between wall towers. This was really more capitalism than defense since they charged a toll to cross.

Today the wall is not nearly as defensive. It's more like Swiss cheese. Holes were punched through in areas for people and train access. In 1800, the City Council got approval from Parliament to start ripping down sections of the wall to "improve" the city by allowing easier access. Luckily, the citizens got riled up and put a stop to it before too much had been ripped down. They honored the leader of the citizen resistance with a statue and now York pays $200,000 a year on wall conservation.

The walls are definitely one of the reasons we are living in York. I highly recommend walking on at least a section if you ever make it here–it's really an incredible experience. You get to see buildings built into or up to the walls, beautifully landscaped gardens, great views of the Minster and city, and you get to walk up, down, or through most of the Bars for free.




And to wrap this up, I'll leave you with the most humorous part of the wall walk—the medieval urinals. I was already somewhat suspicious before I learned what they were. Strangely, these are the only ones on the entire 2 mile stretch of wall.