Source/Archive record SCH5407 - Remedial Work in the Vicinity of the King Charles Tower, City Walls, Chester

Excavation beneath the internal floor level of King Charles’s Tower has revealed the partially-surviving remains of a previous sandstone slab floor surface (102) of uncertain date. Beneath this flagstone surface were layers of loose sandstone rubble (105) containing Roman period ceramic building materials that must be considered residual, incidental inclusions in material imported to this location to raise levels, again at an indeterminate date. 5.2 Excavation of test pit 2 – within the existing wall walkway – has demonstrated that the wall circuit was previously narrower in this location and was subsequently widened by approximately 0.60m through the addition of a new west face or façade (207). The upper levels of the earlier wall circuit had clearly been truncated, as evidenced by the presence of a pink, lime-based mortar adhering to the exposed surface of the in situ sandstone blocks (213). Furthermore, the footings of the west elevation of King Charles’s Tower had been mortared directly onto sandstone fragments (212) (see Plate 8) that were, in turn, mortared directly onto (213), the earlier phase of the city wall circuit. The height of the truncated wall was crudely increased during the post-medieval period with the placing of a single course of sandstone blocks (210), deposition of soil (211) and laying of a flagstone wall-walk surface (209), recorded at a depth of c.0.20m below the current walkway surface. Through the deposition of layers of soil, crushed sandstone and mortar, the subsequent raising of the walkway height continued throughout the post-medieval/modern period, culminating in current flagstone surface (200). 5.3 The results from test pit 2 suggest there had been a clear need to widen the city wall walkway around the base of the King Charles Tower, perhaps following a phase of repair, reconstruction or rebuilding of the tower structure. The width and alignment of the narrower, ‘inner’ wall recorded in test pit 2 reflect the projected width of the existing city wall circuit south of the tower and, furthermore, the point of addition of the outer skin/later west face to the earlier wall circuit can be clearly seen when viewed from the Deanery Field (see Plate 9). The date of the widening of the wall at this point remains uncertain at present. However, the earlier phase of walkway surface, context (209) in test pit 2, cannot have been created until well into the post-medieval period, as indicated by the presence of a firmly-stratified clay tobacco pipe stem fragment recovered from the soil beneath it. Indeed, it is during the eighteenth century that significant alterations to the city walls came about (LeQuesne 1999, 148) and it is perhaps likely that this period also saw the addition of the later façade. 5.4 Although the limited observations do not allow clear-cut interpretation, the results have confirmed the potential complexity and uncertainty that must be assumed at the commencement of any investigation on the monument.