| Westgate | |
|---|---|
West Gate Towers Museum | |
| Part ofCanterburycity wall | |
| St Peter's Street,Canterbury,Kent CT1 2BQ | |
 Westgate | |
| Site information | |
| Type | Gatehouse |
| Owner | Canterbury City Council |
| Condition | Well-preserved |
 | |
| Height | 60 feet (18 m) |
| Site history | |
| Built | 1380 (1380) |
| Built by | ArchbishopSimon Sudbury |
| In use | 1380−present |
| Materials | Kentishragstone |
TheWestgate is amedievalgatehouse inCanterbury,Kent, England. This 60-foot (18 m) high western gate of thecity wall is the largest surviving city gate in England. Built of Kentishragstone around 1379, it is the last survivor of Canterbury's seven medieval gates, still well-preserved and one of the city's most distinctive landmarks. The road still passes between its drum towers. Thisscheduled monument and Grade Ilisted building houses theWest Gate Towers Museum as well as a series of historically themedescape rooms.
Canterbury waswalled by theRomans around 300AD. This has been consistently the most important of the city's gates as it is the London Road entrance and the main entrance from most of Kent. The present towers are amedieval replacement of the Roman west gate, rebuilt around 1380. There was a gate here at the time of theNorman conquest, which is thought to have been Roman. From lateAnglo-Saxon times it had the Church of the Holy Cross on top, but both church and gate were dismantled in 1379, and the gate was rebuilt byArchbishopSimon Sudbury before he died in thePeasants' Revolt of 1381.[1][2][3] It has been suggested that it was built primarily as an entrance forpilgrims visiting the shrine ofSt Thomas Becket at thecathedral.[4] However the rebuild as a defensive status symbol was paid for partly by Sudbury and partly by taxation for military protection against expected raids by the French.[5]
In 1453 Henry VI permitted the Mayor and Commonality to keep a jail at the Westgate, so the building was Canterbury's prison from the 15th to the 19th century, whileCanterbury Castle was the county jail. In January 1648, after theChristmas Day riot,Parliamentarians burnt down all the wooden doors of the city's gates. They were all replaced in 1660, but these replacements were removed at the end of the eighteenth century. They were similar to the surviving woodenChrist Church gates at the cathedral.[1][5] After repairs to the Westgate and jail in 1667, apound was built on the north side for the hail; this is now gone, but Pound Lane remains. The guard rooms, heavily wood-lined in the eighteenth century, became cells for both debtors and criminals, and the room over the arch became the condemned cell with the portcullis now laid on top. Until 1775 there was a grated cage in the prison gateway, where certain prisoners were allowed to beg foralms and speak with passers by. Capital punishment was normally the gallows, plus the stake atWincheap for religious martyrs in the time ofQueen Mary.[1]
In the 19th century, the city walls that joined the gateway to the back of the drum towers were removed. Following this, in 1823–1829, a jailer's house was built on the north side, and this became the headquarters ofCanterbury City Police. It is now a bar and cafe, whose dining room is still known as "The Parade Room", with a policetruncheon used as its badge. The disused iron bridge which connects the Westgate with the bar and cafe dates from this time. Contemporary with this work was the building of St Peter's Place on the south side of the Westgate, along with passages around the Westgate and a new road across theStour, to cope with increased traffic.[5] At the end of the 19th century the Westgate was used as a temporary repository for the cityarchives, and a museum was opened in the gatehouse in 1906.[6]
In 2009–10,Canterbury City Council considered closing the museum, now called the Westgate Towers Museum, which proved to be a controversial option.[7][8] An additional year's funding was made available to give time to examine alternative operating models, and in 2011 the museum was reopened by Charles Lambie, the chairman of the trustees ofCanterbury Archaeological Trust, who intended to build an extension to the building focusing on the penal history of Westgate.[9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18] Lambie died in 2012, having invested £1 million in the project, causing the closure of the museum and generating fresh questions about the building's future. In 2014, the council agreed to assign the lease to the One Pound Lane company, who stated that they intended to reopen the existing museum and develop a restaurant and bar in the premises.[19] The Westgate reopened to the public on 3 August 2015.
In the 21st century, Westgate is the largest surviving city gate in England.[1][2][3][5] The gateway is protected under UK law as a Grade Ilisted building, and a trial to ban road traffic from passing through the gate was undertaken in 2012.[20][21][22]
The gatehouse is expensively faced incoursedashlar of Kentishragstone. It has battered plinths to the drum towers,battlements,machicolations and eighteengunloops: a high number for a gateway, and among the earliestgunholes in Britain. The gunloops would have been added by the beginning of the fifteenth century. It had adrawbridge over theStour, aportcullis and wooden doors.[5]
The gateway has three floors. The ground floor was designed so that the gateway andvaulted passage had entrances to the towers on each side. Each tower had a ground-floor room with fireplace and four gunloops. The north tower's ground-floor room had aspiral staircase to upper floors. The first floor contains a large room with fireplace and, originally, the portcullis mechanism over the vaulted entranceway. This room had doors to the upper room of each tower, each with fireplace and three gunloops, and a northern door to a spiral staircase leading to the roof. Repairs were carried out due to an invasion scare during the 1470s and 1480s. In 1491 or 1492 a large, two-light,transomed,perpendicular east window was added to the large first-floor room, with a view towards thecathedral and along St Peter's Street.[5]
The roof over the large first-floor central room has a battlementedparapet walk, originally with access to the tops of both towers and machicolations, as well as to the two low chambers, each with two gunports, in the tops of both towers. This part of the tower was less well-built than the lower storeys, either due to haste during the Peasants' Revolt or because it was built later. Between 1793 and 1794 the hall over the gate was split into three and the present squarelantern added to the roof, along with the wooden doors and cell linings which are visible today; the cost was £400.[5]
.jpg)
These are 17 six-foot, painted, plaster-castmaquettes for the sixteenbronze barons and two bishops which today stand in theLords Chamber atWestminster Palace, cast in 1847−1851.[23][24] These were made by various named sculptors, and represent the men who signedMagna Carta. Each of the fifteen barons and two bishops is named at the base. In 1908 three of the maquettes were displayed in the museum,[nb 1] and two remained on show at the Westgate in 2013. The rest were put into storage in the ground floor room of the north tower in 1987, along with several other museum exhibits, where they were forgotten until they were rediscovered by museum staff in May 2008, when the building was flooded. Most of them are still there.[nb 2] As of May 2011, ten of the maquettes in the basement had been photographed; the fate of the remaining five was unknown.[25]
The sculptors of the maquettes are as follows:John Thomas who made the maquette ofStephen Langton,[nb 3] as of 2013 inCanterbury Heritage Museum and as of 2021 inThe Beaney;Patrick MacDowell; Henry Timbrell; James Sherwood Westmacott; J. Thorneycroft (possiblyThomas Thornycroft);Frederick Thrupp; Alexander Handyside Ritchie; andWilliam Frederick Woodington. As of 2021, three of the maquettes (Stephen Langton, Thomas Robert Fitzwalter by Frederick Thrupp and Sieur de Quincy by James Westmacott) have been restored and are displayed inThe Beaney, Canterbury.[26]
Taking a pilgrim's view, Sergeant Johnson?
51°16′53″N1°04′33″E / 51.28139°N 1.07583°E /51.28139; 1.07583 (West Gate Towers Museum)
Museums in Kent | ||
|---|---|---|
List of museums in Kent - includes location, type |  | |
| ||
See also:Tourist attractions in Kent | ||
