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A Group of Late Roman City Walls in Gallia Belgica*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 November 2011

Stephen Johnson
Stephen Johnson
Affiliation:
Wadham College, Oxford
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Extract

The late Roman defences which are found in many of the chief cities of France have long been remarkable for similarities of design. In the northern and western parts of France many of the cities were protected by thick, high walls, built in rubble concrete with a facing of ‘petit appareil’, interspersed with rows of tiles usually in double or triple courses. The foundations were of large unmortared stone blocks, which were, as often as not, re-used from earlier buildings destroyed in the barbarian raids of the later third century or else deliberately demolished to provide a solid foundation for the new walls. The whole circuit was strengthened by the addition of external towers, usually of one build with the walls. Fortifications of this type are also found in other provinces of the western empire.

Type
Articles
Information
Britannia , Volume 4 , November 1973 , pp. 210 - 223
Copyright
Copyright © Stephen Johnson 1973. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 In Britain, this style is commonly found in particular in the Saxon Shore forts. In Germany, the style is represented by Haus Biirgel and Deutz on the Rhine frontier, and in Italy there is a small fortification of the same type near Milan (see Calderini, A., in Festschrift Rudolf Egger, i, 236–41).Google Scholar

2 Blanchet, A., Les Enceintes Romaines de la Gaule, Paris 1907.Google Scholar

3 Blanchet, A., ‘Recherches sur les tuiles et briques des constructions de la Gaule Romaine’, Revue Archeologique (ser. 5) xii (1920), pp. 189 ff.Google Scholar

4 A description of the walls of Beauvais is to be found in V. Leblond, Bulletin Archéologique, 1915, 26 ff., and regular reports on the excavation have appeared in the Circonscriptions sections of Gallia vii (1949), 112; ix (1951), 82; xii (1954), 144; xv (1957), 165; xvii (1959), 282; xix (1961), 301; xxv (1967), 301; xxvii (1969), 231; xxix (1971), 225. For older information, see Bull. Arch, i (1843), 331 ff.

5 Loc cit. (note 4), 28. Blanchet, ‘Les Enceintes…’ (cited n. 2) p. 266 gives a distance of 80 metres.

6 For a recent description and the latest references to the defences of Senlis, see Butler, R. M., Arch. Journ, cxvi (1959), p. 32.Google Scholar For a general conspectus of the development and growth of the town in late Roman and post-Roman times, see Roblin, M. E. A., Revue des Études Anciennes, 67, 3–4 (1965), 368 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Op. cit. (note 2), 114.

8 For a further photograph of this tower, see pl. IA (facing p. 28) in Butler's article in Arch. Journ. (cited in note 6).

9 Still the only description of the walls of Soissons is in Blanchet, op. cit. (note 2), 103-6. Older references are given there. Mention is also made of the walls in Vercauteren, ‘Etude sur les Civitates de la Belgique Seconde’ Acad. Royale de Belgique, Classe des Lettres, xxxiii (1934), 106 ffGoogle Scholar. For recent finds, see Gallia xxv (1967), 189.Google Scholar

10 See, for example, Blanchet, , op. cit. (note 2), pl. 11, 2.Google Scholar

11 Lebeuf, L'Abbé, in 1735, quoted in the Bull. Soc. Arch, de Soissons, 1853, 199 ff.Google Scholar

12 The only other site with comparable tiles seems to be Nantes. The measurements are given in Blanchet, ‘Recherches sur les tuiles…’, cited in note 3.

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15 That the patterns of the tooling on the stones were so well preserved may be due to their being covered by the rampart bank, but the function of the tooling might originally have been intended to key a plaster facing.

16 On Die, see Carte archéologique de la Gaule Romaine 11, Drôme, p. 44 ff.

17 See Carte archéologique de la Gaule Romaine 12, L'Aude, pp. 166 f.

18 Though Amiens (see below), has a rectangular tower at one of its gateways which is in many ways similar.

19 On this, see the article of M. E. A. Roblin, cited above in note 6. M. Roblin has succeeded in demonstrating, both for Senlis and Paris, that there were areas of suburbs outside the defended enceintes in late Roman times. On Paris, see M. Roblin, Revue des Etudes Anciennes, 1951, 301 ff.

20 Wheeler, R. E. M., JRS xvi (1926), 192.Google Scholar

21 The walls of Perigueux were reportedly 6 m wide. There is a list of wall-thicknesses, now somewhat out of date, in Blanchet ‘Les Enceintes…’, p. 258, repeated in Grenier, Manuel a'Archéologie Gallo-Romaine i, 518.

22 Loc. cit. (note 13), 38.

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26 Leblond, V., loc. cit. (note 4), 32.Google Scholar

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28 The text of the Notitia Galliarum is given in O. Seeck, ‘Notitia Dignitatum’, 262 ff. The chapter on Belgica Secunda runs:

In provincia Belgica secunda civitates num. XII:

Metropolis civitas Remorum

Civitas Suessionum

Civitas Catalaunorum

Civitas Veromandorum

Civitas Atrabatum

Civitas Camaracensium

Civitas Turnacensium

Civitas Silvanectum

Civitas Bellovacorum

Civitas Ambianensium

Civitas Morinum

Civitas Bononiensium

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36 Favière, J., Revue Arch, du Centre, iii (1964), 303–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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38 S.H.A. Probus 9; and Aurelius Victor 37, 4.

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