The Westgate

The Westgate. . The first gate on this site was built in the late third century A.D. as part of the Roman town defences. Nothing is known of the arrangement of the Roman gate. but in the late Anglo-Saxon period a chapel dedicated to the Holy Cross was situated above the gateway. This became a parish church. In the late fourteenth century when the old gateway was removed, a new church was built south of the gate. The church was converted into a new Guildhall for the city in 1978., The Westgate of Canterbury is one of the finest surviving medieval gateways in Britain. Work began on it in the late 1370s when the ‘old tumbledown Westgate’ was demolished. Built at an unsettled time when invasion from the French was expected at any time, the gateway was both a fine defensive structure, incorporating several innovative features and a status symbol for the city. The gate was probably designed by the royal master mason Henry Yevele and was a costly undertaking, being built almost entirely of Kentish ragstone which was an expensive material to transport. The cost was met partly through public taxes and partly by Archbishop Simon Sudbury. The gate was finished c.1380., The design of the gate incorporates battered plinths to the circular towers (now almost buried in the wide road bridge), a drawbridge, portcullis, heavy gates, battlements and machicolations (murder holes) above the gate. There are also eighteen gunloops (or 'Gunholes'). These are the earliest gunloops documented in Britain and guns were in place at the Westgate by 1404. All of the medieval gunloops are on the front of the gate. Those at the rear are 'fakes' inserted in the nineteenth century after the adjoining city wall had been demolished., The gate is arranged on three levels. On the ground floor the portcullised gate opened into a vaulted passageway. Each of the tower rooms on this level contains a fireplace and four gunports. A spiral stair leads up to the first floor to a large 'hall' above the vaulted passage and rooms in each of the towers. The 'hall' housed the mechanism for raising and lowering the portcullis. There is also a fireplace and a window looking towards St Peter's Street. The two tower chambers each had three gunports. At the top of the gate there is a battlemented parapet walk with access to the machicolations (murder holes). The two tower rooms at this level are less tall and well built. It is thought that this may indicate that the gate was hurredly completed when time and funding was short., In 1473 the Crown granted the mayor and commonality of Canterbury 'the keeping of the Gaol at Westgate' and from this time the gate became the city's prison. Documentation relating to this use is scarce, but in 1478-9 there is reference to repairwork after an escape of 'thieves and prisoners' through a hole called 'le Gunhole'. An iron bar was inserted in the hole to prevent further escapes. More work is listed in the following year, including work on the top of the towers, for which the prisoners had to carry up stone and timber. In 1648, during the Civil War, troops burnt the wooden doors of Westgate and other city gates. They were replaced in about 1660 at the expense of Archbishop Juxon who also replaced the wooden gates at Burgate, St George's and Christ Church gate. They may therefore have looked similar to those still in place at the cathedral. The Westgate was used as a prison until a new 'City Gaol and House of Correction' was built on the north side of the gate in 1829. This was on land that had previously been occupied by the city's pound (hence Pound Lane). These buildings are connected to the Westgate by an iron bridge. They later became a Police Station. At this time the city wall either side of the gate was demolished, new passages were made around the gate and new bridges built over the river., Today the Westgate houses a museum and small exhibition on the city's defences. From the battlements there are superb views of the suburb of St Dunstan's to the west, the line of the walls extending north and south and the main street of Canterbury to the east., (French, German, Dutch text not transcribed)