Teignmouth Town Wall (The Gatehouse Record)

In the civil parish of Teignmouth.
In the historic county of Devonshire.
Modern Authority of Devon.
1974 county of Devon.
Medieval County of Devon.

OS Map Grid Reference: SX94377303
Latitude 50.54749° Longitude -3.49222°

Teignmouth Town Wall has been described as a probable Urban Defence.

There are no visible remains.

This is a Grade 2* listed building protected by law*.

Description

A length of embattled wall, close to the shore at Teignmouth, is mentioned by Leland. It must have stood in the neighbourhood of Saint Michael's Church. (PastScape)

Leland, writing in the sixteenth century, in his Itinerary gives what we may regard as an account of Teignmouth in the time of the later Tudor sovereigns. He mentions by their present names the Ness and the Pole Sand; and speaks of East Teignmouth as taken to be the elder of the two towns, and as possessing a market and a church dedicated to St. Michael, and also a piece of embattled wall against the shore. On the west side of this town is, he says, a piece of sandy ground called the Deane or Dene, " whereon have been not many years since divers houses and wine cellars." In West Teignmouth he only mentions the church of St. James. The piece of embattled wall he speaks of must, I conceive, have been in the neighbourhood of St. Michael's Church, near which the market and the fair were held and the market cross stood. A small battery existed at one time on the Den in another direction, and not far from the site of the present one, but this was not erected till after 1774, and was known as the Fort. The wine cellars must, I apprehend, have been cellars for the storage of wine for purposes of trade situated not far from the place of the market and fair, but they seem to have disappeared before Leland's time. (Lake 1904)

Sources of information, references and further reading

National Heritage List for England Listed Building number(s) 1269111
Historic England (PastScape) Defra or Monument number(s) 447769; 447778.
County Historic Environment Record (or Sites and Monuments Record) number(s) 21826.

Books
- Salter, Mike, 2013, Medieval Walled Towns (Malvern: Folly Publications) p. 157 (slight)
  Creighton, O.H. and Higham, R.A., 2005, Medieval Town Walls (Stroud: Tempus) p. 226, 257
  Salter, Mike, 1999, The Castles of Devon and Cornwall (Malvern: Folly Publications) p. 87 (slight)
  Pevsner, Nikolaus and Cherry, Bridget, 1989, Buildings of England: Devon (Harmondsworth) p. 796
  King, D.J.C., 1983, Castellarium Anglicanum (London: Kraus) Vol. 1 p. 122
Periodical Articles
- Creighton, Oliver, 2006, ''Castles of Communities': Medieval Town Defences in England; Wales and Gascony' Château Gaillard Vol. 22 p. 75-86
  Lake, W.C., 1904, 'Ancient Teignmouth' Transactions of the Devonshire Association Vol. 36 p. 109 online copy
Antiquarian (Histories and accounts from late medieval and early modern writers)
- Chandler, John, 1993, John Leland's Itinerary: travels in Tudor England (Sutton Publishing) p. 117
  Toulmin-Smith, Lucy (ed), 1907, The itinerary of John Leland in or about the years 1535-1543 (London: Bell and Sons) Vol. 1 p. 225 online copy

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The bibliography owes much to various bibliographies produced by John Kenyon for the Council for British Archaeology, the Castle Studies Group and others.

Suggestions for finding online and/or hard copies of bibliographical sources can be seen at this link.
Minor archaeological investigations, such as watching brief reports, and some other 'grey' literature is most likely to be held by H.E.R.s but is often poorly referenced and is unlikely to be recorded here, or elsewhere, but some suggestions can be found here.

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*The listed building may not be the actual medieval building, but a building on the site of, or incorporating fragments of, the described site.

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