former greatness to be pulled down? Simply to clear the site for the
erection of modern dwelling-houses. A very strong protest was made
against this act of municipal barbarism by learned societies, the
Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings, and others, and we
hope that the hand of the destroyer has been stayed.

Most of the principal towns in England were protected by walls, and
the citizens regarded it as a duty to build them and keep them in
repair. When we look at some of these fortifications, their strength,
their height, their thickness, we are struck by the fact that they
were very great achievements, and that they must have been raised with
immense labour and gigantic cost. In turbulent and warlike times they
were absolutely necessary. Look at some of these triumphs of medieval
engineering skill, so strong, so massive, able to defy the attacks of
lance and arrow, ram or catapult, and to withstand ages of neglect and
the storms of a tempestuous clime. Towers and bastions stood at
intervals against the wall at convenient distances, in order that
bowmen stationed in them could shoot down any who attempted to scale
the wall with ladders anywhere within the distance between the
towers. All along the wall there was a protected pathway for the
defenders to stand, and machicolations through which boiling oil or
lead, or heated sand could be poured on the heads of the attacking
force. The gateways were carefully constructed, flanked by defending
towers with a portcullis, and a guard-room overhead with holes in the
vaulted roof of the gateway for pouring down inconvenient substances
upon the heads of the besiegers. There were several gates, the usual
number being four; but Coventry had twelve, Canterbury six, and
Newcastle-on-Tyne seven, besides posterns.

[Illustration: Old Houses built on the Town Wall, Rye]