This vandal showman actually dared to request the Corporation to
demolish the gate on account of the difficulty of getting his
procession through the low arch. This is hard to believe, but it is
infinitely more difficult to understand the aboriginal minds of some
of the members of the Corporation when the records unblushingly reveal
that the showman's preposterous request not only found both a proposer
and a seconder, but that the votes were equally divided on the matter,
and it was only the Mayor's casting vote which has preserved for the
city its noble entry. Such a searchlight as this, throwing into
dazzling clearness the almost entire lack of appreciation for its
historic buildings possessed by the controllers of the city must make
one grateful for the happy chances which have permitted so much that
is old and picturesque to survive.

[Illustration: WESTGATE, CANTERBURY, FROM WITHIN.
This is the only survivor of the gates which studded the mediæval
walls of the city.]

From the East Station there extends as far as the site of the old
Riding Gate a well-preserved length of the wall with semicircular
towers at intervals, and from opposite Lady Wootton's Green to St.
Mary's Church, standing close to the site of North Gate, lengths of
the wall, with a tower at intervals, form thrillingly medieval
foregrounds for the Cathedral towers. In Pound Lane the wall continues
in a furtive and rather desultory fashion until it ends at the West
Gate. Opposite Lady Wootton's Green there still remain indications of
a narrow postern, which is generally accepted as that through which
Queen Bertha was wont to pass on her way to her devotions at St.
Martin's Church. This, however, presupposes that the portion of the
wall immediately surrounding this particular point is Roman or very