Berwick upon Tweed Walls

The walls of Berwick upon Tweed were lavishly built by the usually parsimonious Elizabeth I, to defend the town against Scottish assault. They were largely made redundant by the Union of the English and Scots crowns on the accession of James I/VI on Elizabeth’s death in 1603 and are now a major tourist attraction.

My Experience

We actually stayed in a B&B in Berwick upon Tweed for our visit to the walls, my first ever B&B stay! I don’t think we walked the whole circuit of the walls as I didn’t really do any research beforehand so we just visited a couple of the bastions. There were information boards and the walls were well maintained.

Berwick upon Tweed Walls Photo Gallery

These next photos were taken in the dim and distant past of 2007 and they were not taken in RAW so these are pretty much unedited jpgs. I’d like to think my own skill in photography has moved on since then too so these may not be ideal pictures. Sorry!

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History

The prosperous royal burgh of Berwick had been part of Scotland for more than three centuries when, in 1292, Edward I of England declared John de Balliol King of Scotland in Berwick Castle. Edward’s feudal claims over Balliol soon led to Scottish discontent and to Scotland’s alliance with France. English policy was to make war. Berwick was captured in 1296 but retaken by Robert Bruce in 1318. The town changed sides several times before finally being recaptured by the English in 1482.

High walls and flanking towers, like those built at Berwick, were normally sufficient security against attack and damage from siege engines in the Middle Ages. But the development of gunpowder artillery in the 16th century slowly destroyed the value of traditional fortifications and it was not possible to adapt them satisfactorily.

In western Europe an entirely new kind of artillery defence was developed, of which the Berwick ramparts are an outstanding example.The north-east corner of the town was particularly vulnerable to attack and in 1539–42 a massive circular fortification was erected here, later called Lord’s Mount. In Henry VIII’s reign other works elsewhere around the walls were carried out.

The next development was the introduction of bastioned fortification, found first in Italy at Verona. In 1558 Mary I ordered the English military engineer Sir Richard Lee to Berwick to replace the medieval walls with a bastioned fortification system. In that year Calais had been lost to the French who urged the Scots to attack England’s northern outpost.

Bastions are gun emplacements projecting from the wall, enabling defenders to fire outwards across the ditch, or alternatively to repel an enemy attacking the walls to either side. The construction of the new fortifications (which after Mary’s death in 1558 became known as the Elizabethan ramparts) continued as fast as possible but stopped in 1569 before work on the upper ramparts had begun.

By 1568, when Mary, Queen of Scots, fled to England, the Franco-Scottish threat had subsided. As it became clear that James VI of Scotland would succeed Elizabeth I as James I of England, no further work was done to the defences for the remainder of Elizabeth’s reign.

The Elizabethan ramparts were modified in the 17th century and the alarm caused by the second Jacobite rising in 1745–6 ensured that they were kept in good order in the 18th century. During the Napoleonic Wars it was proposed to abandon those works that could not be used for the defence of the estuary.

The end of Berwick as a fortified town is marked in the 19th century by the enlargement of Scotsgate, the removal of the Main Guard to the rear of Palace Green and, in 1837, the creation of the pedestrian way along the ramparts.

References

General information on visiting Berwick upon Tweed walls is on the Visit Northumbria page here.

There is a good guide to the history of the walls and a walking route on the English Heritage site here and the history above is copied from there.