Melcombe Regis Town Wall (The Gatehouse Record)

Also known as, or recorded in historical documents as;
Melcoumbe; Miltoun

In the civil parish of Weymouth.
In the historic county of Dorset.
Modern Authority of Dorset.
1974 county of Dorset.
Medieval County of Dorset.

OS Map Grid Reference: SY678787
Latitude 50.60786° Longitude -2.45535°

Melcombe Regis Town Wall has been described as a Urban Defence although is doubtful that it was such.

There are no visible remains.

Comments

Leland wrote the town was undefended and razed by the French, so whatever defences there were must have been slight. Three years of murage in a small port is unlikely to have produce sufficient revenue for significant building work. Topographically giving land defences to this penisular of land would not be difficult and there does seem to have been a boundary ditch along the line of Bond Lane called Cunigar or Coneygar Ditch. It seems entirely probably that no defences were ever constructed and the murage grant and petition may have had more to do with rivalry between Melcombe and Weymouth. This feuding was resolved in 1571 when the towns were combined as a single borough. Medieval Melcombe was on the north side of Weymouth harbour in what is now the centre of Weymouth, which originally just lay on the south side of the harbour.

Sources of information, references and further reading

Further information may be available from the holder of the county Historic Environment Record.

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. 183, 221, 257
  Bond, C.J., 1987, 'Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Defences' in Schofield, J. and Leech, R. (eds) Urban Archaeology in Britain (CBA Research Report 61) p. 92-116 online copy
  Turner, H.L., 1971, Town Defences in England and Wales (London) p. 198
Periodical Articles
- Creighton, Oliver, 2006, ''Castles of Communities': Medieval Town Defences in England; Wales and Gascony' Château Gaillard Vol. 22 p. 75-86
Primary (Medieval documents or transcriptions of such documents - This section is far from complete and the secondary sources should be consulted for full references.)
- Maxwell Lyte, H.C. (ed), 1898, Calendar of Patent Rolls Edward III (1338-40) Vol. 4 p. 63 (murage grant) online copy
  Strachey, J. (ed), 1767-83, Rotuli Parliamentorum; ut et petitiones, et placita in Parliamento (London: Record Commission) Vol. 3 p. 70 (Petition to parliament) (superseded by Given-Wilson, C. (ed), 2005, The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England Access via PROME (subscription required))
  - Also see the Gatehouse murage pages for full details of murage grants, petitions and other such.
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. 134
  Toulmin-Smith, Lucy (ed), 1907, The itinerary of John Leland in or about the years 1535-1543 (London: Bell and Sons) Vol. 1 p. 250, 304 online copy
Other sources: Theses; 'grey' literature; in-house reports; unpublished works; etc.
- Dorset County Council, 2011, Dorset Historic Towns Survey: Weymouth and Melcombe Regis Download 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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