BERWICK CASTLE AND TOWN WALL Berwick-upon-Tweed is said with some justice to have suffered more sieges than any place with the possible exception of Jerusalem. In the Middle Ages it changed hands a bewildering number of times, being a bone of contention between England and Scotland. The town developed as a prosperous port on the north bank of the Tweed under the patronage of the kings of Scotland. Berwick was first ceded to England in 1175 as one of the conditions of release forced on William the Lion following his capture at Alnwick. Richard 1 sold it back to the Scots to help pay for his Crusade. Although sacked by King John in 1215, Berwick remained in Scottish hands until Edward I invaded in 1296. The native townsfolk were massacred after its fall and English colonists were sent to repopulate the vacant borough. Sir William Wallace temporarily recovered Berwick for the Scots and Robert Bruce seized the town by a ruse in 1318, Edward II failing to recover it. Edward 111 blockaded the town into surrender (1333) and Berwick remained English for the rest of the fourteenth century, with one brief exception. Then, during Henry Percy's revolt against Henry IV, the rebels handed Berwick over to the Scots in return for support. Henry IV marched north and captured the town after a cannon bombardment (1405). Berwick's last period in Scottish hands was similarly initiated by the deposed Henry VI in a desperate effort to regain his throne. It was recaptured (at the second attempt) by a large English army under Richard, Duke of Gloucester, in 1482. Since then it has changed hands no more, though the existing defences bear witness to the invasion scares of the next three centuries.

Medieval Berwick was strongly defended by its castle and town wall. The stone wall, with a circuit over two miles long, was commenced by Edward 1 and strengthened after Robert Bruce captured the town. However, little survives of the medieval defences. Instead Berwick is renowned for its Elizabethan fortifications which are among the best of their kind in Europe. They were actually begun in 1558, i.e. late in Queen Mary's reign, when war with France rekindled fears of a Scottish invasion in support of their old ally. Sir Richard Lee, who had worked on the defences of Calais prior to its fall, was brought in to oversee the construction and a number of Italian engineers were consulted. Work proceeded amid several changes in design, since the science of artillery fortification was developing rapidly in this decade. The problems were compounded by the presence of the older town wall, which had been strengthened as recently as Henry VIII's reign. The new enclosure was to be smaller than its predecessor, the northern part of the old walled town being abandoned. After Mary Queen of Scots fled to England the perceived threat from Scotland diminished and the defences were left little more than half complete in 1570. That is why the Elizabethan rampart only guards the landward (north and east) sides of the town. To the south and west, along the Tweed estuary, the medieval wall was left in commission.

Since they are designed for defence by (and against) artillery, the defences of Berwick are very different in conception to medieval town walls. The stone wall is just a low retaining wall backed by a wide earth rampart devised to cushion the shock of cannon fire. Defence was conducted chiefly from the enormous bastions platforms From which counter-fire could be directed at an attacker. They also allowed cross-fire along the base of the rampart from the gun chambers located in the neck of each bastion. It is these considerations which dictated the peculiar, 'arrow-head' form of these bastions, rare in England but often encountered in artillery fortifications elsewhere. There are five bastions on the ramparts of Berwick: Meg's Mount, Cumberland Bastion, Brass Bastion, Windmill Bastion and King's Mount. The first and last, since they mark the ends of the Elizabethan rampart, are incomplete. The earthen mounds on top of the bastions are a Civil War enhancement. Of the two gates through the defences Scotsgate (north) is a nineteenth-century enlargement but the Cow Port (cast) is original. Most of the riverside wall is no longer medieval, having been rebuilt with gun batteries following the Jacobite invasion of 1745. The only exceptions are the stretch between King's Mount and Fisher's Fort and the rounded Coxon's Tower at the south corner of the circuit.

Some fragments of the medieval town wall can be seen in the abandoned north part of the circuit. The main survivors are the octagonal Bell Tower and a semicircular gun battery called Lord's Mount, the latter one of Henry VIII's improvements. Beyond, on a bluff above the river, are the sad remnants of Berwick Casde. Founded in the twelfth century by one of the Scottish kings (probably David 1), this celebrated royal stronghold was failing into decay when the Elizabethan town defences were built. Most of what remained was swept away in 1850 to make room for the railway station. Only the ruinous west curtain of the castle was permitted to survive as a boundary wall. It probably incorporates some pre-1296 masonry though the projecting semi-circular tower is an early Tudor gun emplacement. The curtain continues as a spur wall, dropping steeply down the hillside to the remains of another gun tower on the river bank. The wall-walk descends in a series of steps amply justifying their nickname of 'Breakneck Stairs'. Edward 1 is credited with the spur wall in the years following his conquest of the town.

Access.. The castle and town defences are freely accessible (both EH).

Reference.. The Fortifications of Berwick-upon- Tweed by I. Macivor. HKW (11 &IV).

Relations: Carlisle as a Border town. The Elizabethan fortifications at Portsmouth, Carisbrooke and Pendennis.