The majority of studies of fortifications tend to concentrate, naturally enough, on their design, construction and use, closing with their subsequent decommissioning. Initially, this article does not differ from this format, but then goes on to look at what happened to a particular site once its military usefulness was over.

There have been several studies of the English Civil War defences of London before this (including one in FORT itself);¹ therefore some of the sources I have used will not be new to students of this subject, but where this article differs is that it concentrates on just one part of the Lines of Communication, the fort known as Whitechapel Mount.

Today’s London Hospital is dominated by the original mid-18th-century hospital building. One of the earliest views of this hospital is the engraving by Chatelain and W H Toms, dated 1753.² This view, looking southeastwards, shows not only Boulton Mainwaring’s hospital building,³ but also the north-east corner of a small hillock known as the Whitechapel Mount (fig 1).

Fifty years later, the Illustrated London News carried a different illustration⁴ – while this exaggerated its actual size, it did emphasise just how much of a local landmark Whitechapel Mount was (fig 2)

But what were its origins? A recent history of the hospital claims, probably erroneously, ‘The Mount was a saxon earthwork, built to defend London’.⁵ However, there is some evidence to suggest that the Mount may have been, in part at least, a natural mound and was known as the Mount at least as far back as Cade’s Rebellion of the mid-15th century – Stow mentioned in his Annals ‘an encampment of the Commons near the Mount at Mile End’.⁶

Some 200 years after Cade, Britain was plunged into civil war. London was of vital importance to both sides, and by fleeing the capital in January 1642, Charles I placed his cause at a distinct disadvantage. Parliament was in no doubt that the Royalists would attempt to win back London and it was the threat of attack that led Parliament,in August 1642, to issue ‘Directions for the Defence of London’. This contained provision for the fortification of the capital and specified troops for its defence.⁷

Little more was progressed with the fortifications until around the time of the Battle of Edgehill (23 October 1642) when instructions were issued to:

This initial phase of fortification mainly took the form of blocking streets with barriers or suspending chains across them to prevent the passage of cavalry and the building of guardhouses.⁹ Subsequent orders were issued to build some small earthworks (probably trenches and ramparts) by the main roads out of London and, in addition, there is archaeological evidence to suggest that the plans for the defence of London included the use of the existing Medieval fortifications.¹⁰

The Royalist advance on London that commenced following Edgehill was finally halted in November 1642 at Turnham Green, the Royalists falling back on Oxford, which became the Cavalier capital for the next four years. Few doubted that the Royalists would approach again, a threat that hurried on the fortification of London, and in December 1642 John Evelyn visited London and viewed the ‘celebrated line of communication’.¹¹

What is not clear, however, is just how developed were the defences by the end of 1642. It was not until March 1643 that Parliament ordered the building of a circuit of defences and one can only presume that the defences built prior to Spring 1643 were limited and hastily constructed as a result of the threat of immediate attack following Edgehill. Indeed, N G Brett-James argued for ‘two distinct fortifications of London, one in 1642 and the other in 1643’.¹² When William Lithgow, a Scottish merchant and traveller visited the area in April 1643, he noted:

These were positioned approximately 400m to the east of Whitechapel fort and it is possible to conclude that they form part of the 1642 defences.

One can only guess as to the exact Royalist strategy for 1643, although a ‘three-pronged’ attack on London seems feasible (one from the north-east, one from the direction of Oxford and the third from the south-west – Royalist successes in Yorkshire, the West Country and the South Midlands/Thames Valley during the first half of 1643 add weight to this). However, at least one Royalist doubted the ability of the king’s armies to mount such an attack. In his History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, Edward, Earl of Clarendon wrote:

Despite calls for peace both the Common Council and Parliament felt obliged to take steps to further protect London. On 23 February 1643, an Act of Common Council was passed ordering the construction of defences including ‘A hornworke with two flankers be placed at Whitechappell windmills’.¹⁵ Parliament approved this scheme on 7 March:

With Parliamentary approval work could commence, and on 13 March 1643, the Venetian Secretary in England, Gerolamo Agostini, wrote to the Doge and Senate noting, 'They have sent to Holland for engineers and already thay have begun to work with great energy and a large number of navvies’.¹⁷

A week later, Agostini reported:

At any one time as many as 20,000 would be labouring on the fortifications without pay.¹⁹ The Livery Companies would compete with one another to see who would furnish the largest labour force. For instance, on successive days during May and June 1643, the Butchers, Glovers, Porters, Shoemakers, Taylors,Vintners and Weavers worked on the fortifications. The Weavers furnished no fewer than 9000 workers on a single day, marching to work with drums beating and banners streaming.²⁰ On 3 May:

Even the government of the City, the Common Council, was involved, and on 8 May:

By 15 May, the Venetian Secretary was able to report that the forts were completed.²³ During April, Lithgow walked the entire 18km circuit in a single day. Commencing at Wapping, he described all the forts, including the one at Whitechapel (fig 3):

Lithgow described the defences as, ‘erected of turffe, sand, watles, and earthen work’,²⁵ while the rampart itself was, according to his description was ‘three yards thick and on the trench side twice as high’.²⁶ While no contemporary account gives any dimensions for the fort (and there is no archaeological evidence for this either) it is possible to estimate its size thanks to an 18th-century description: 100m long by 55m wide.²⁷ Of the forts north of the Thames, only the fort at the New River Head was larger, although the fort at Whitechapel was smaller than all of the forts south of the Thames. Compared with other Civil War fortifications, Whitechapel fort is smaller than the Queens Sconce at Newark, but larger than Muskham Bridge and Stoke Lodge (both also at Newark), Cornbury Park (Oxfordshire), and King Charles Castle (Tresco).²⁸

Lieutenant-Colonel W G Ross, RE, gives a typical dimension of civil war fortification ditches to be between 2.5 and 4.5m across and 2m deep, and the supporting dike of between 2 and 2.5m high.²⁹ Recent archaeological evidence from a site just to the south of the site of the Whitechapel Mount gives the dimensions of the ditch as ‘5.5m wide and 1.40m deep’.³⁰ This compares with other excavated Civil War ditches such as Exeter (3m wide and 2m deep), Gloucester (5.5m wide and 2.3m deep), and Taunton (5m wide and 1.5m deep).³¹

Masonry was used in the construction of the gateways – there is evidence to support its use in the construction of at least two of London’s forts for in 1646:

The defensive ditches were a mixture of dry and wet. The evidence for the latter comes from the British Library’s copy of G Vertue’s 1738 Plan of the City of London as fortified by Order of Parliament in the years 1642 and 1643 to which some notes have been added by Cromwell Mortimer MD, and dated 1746 (fig 4). One note says ‘The green were dry ditches. The blue were watery ditches’.³³ Unfortunately, the colouring has long since faded from the map. However, the shading does remain, and various sections are shaded in different fashions. The section from the Thames to ‘A Bulwark and half on the Hill at the north end of Gravel Lane’³⁴ is shaded in the same way as the Thames itself. When a section of the ditch just to the south of the site of Whitechapel Mount was excavated in 1992–4, there was enough environmental data to support the fact that the lower part of the ditch was wet.³⁵ Its width of 5.5m makes this too wide to have been a drainage ditch.

Using the descriptions of both Lithgow and Lysine together with Vertue’s plan, Rocque’s map, and the available archaeological evidence, the fort at Whitechapel was a horn-work, flanked by two bulwarks. It had a frontage of 100m, a depth of 55m, the earthen ramparts being about 4m high (5.5m from the bottom of the ditch) and a base thickness of 2.7m. It was palisaded with wooden stakes and mounted seven cannon. Positioned just to the south of the Essex road (now Whitechapel Road, its location being between New Road and the hospital. Mount Terrace now occupies the site), a defensive ditch, probably water-filled, 5.5m wide and 1.4m deep surrounded the fort. Inside the fort was a timber guardhouse with a tilled roof.

The Civil Wars brought much economic disruption to the country and, in many ways, London suffered more than most. Not only did it have to pay for the majority of the Parliamentary war effort, its trade with other areas of the country and abroad was seriously restricted. The construction and maintenance of the defences placed additional economic strain upon the capital. Its cost was enormous – perhaps only London could have afforded it. The City had to advance £12,000 out of its own funds between March and July 1643, and in September 1643 Parliament passed an Ordinance making the City responsible for the defences to the sum of £5482 per month.36 Lithgow estimated the costs for maintaining the defences and suggesting where the funds might come from:

Although Lithgow has a tendency to exaggerate (he has been named ‘Lying Lithgow’ by certain of his contemporaries)38 there is no doubt that the costs involved in the construction and maintaining the defences was considerable.

Throughout the Spring of 1643, trade was disrupted as work continued on the defences. Such was the organisation that individual trades would work on particular days, thus ensuring that nobody would benefit by the absence of a competitor. During the autumn of 1642, Parliament had ordered that shops should shut so that traders ‘may with greater diligence attend the defence’39 of London. Lithgow lists the individual trades working upon the defences during the May of that year. These included 8000 tailors, 7000 watermen, 5000 shoemakers, 5000 cordwainers, 3000 porters, 1000 oyster-wives and 3000 from the feltmakers, fishmongers and coopers.40 Undoubtedly, the traders and the merchants felt it important that their livelihoods were protected, but such was the disruption that their attendance on the fortifications caused to trade, that many of them petitioned Parliament and the Common Council.41

Communication to and from London was reduced by the blocking of every street in and out of the capital:

On the south side of the river, according to Vertue’s 1738 map, only the Newington and Deptford Roads remained open.43

Not only did those who laboured upon the defences have to do so without pay and had to suffer a loss of trade, they were also liable for the upkeep of the defences themselves at a rate of ‘2d in the pound or 6d for houses valued at £5 per annum’.44 Those who supplied materials for the construction of the defences had to wait sometimes years for payment. For instance, in March 1646, the Committee of Fortifications for the City of London informed the Committee of Arrears that:

The construction of the defences involved the destruction of all the buildings which stood in the path of, or adjacent to, the defences, and those against the outside of the Medieval walls. The fortifications damaged surrounding farmland (there are also instances where land was deliberately flooded as part of the defences) and those whose livelihoods were dependent upon agriculture faced hardship. The forts and other defences covered cultivated land, while in other areas, access to farmland and buildings (including at least two windmills, probably including the one at Whitechapel) was restricted. The building and facing of ramparts required turf and the extensive stripping of this from surrounding grazing land rendered it unusable for years afterwards.46

Shoreditch landowner, Elizabeth Wiseman, complained, ‘her pastures have been digged up for a great fort for the safety of the city’.47 Henry Philpott of Mile End Green also lost land through the building of the defences.48 Before the outbreak of the Civil War, land in the Whitechapel area was leased to Miles Brand at an annual rent of £16. Brand repaired Whitechapel Mill and built a number of tenements, but the construction of the fort and other earthworks had necessitated the demolition of these houses and the mill was ‘made uselesse’. The resulting losses were estimated by Brand to be £400. Despite his situation, his landlord brought an action against him for unpaid rent.49 The construction of the defences attracted a great deal of attention. Some of this attention was from curious onlookers, such as John Evelyn, while others were not quite so innocent. John Webb, the Deputy Surveyor of Works, took particulars of the forts and sent them to the king at Oxford,50 and Sir Kenelm Digby was arrested at Mile End while observing the construction of the fort of Whitechapel.51

Although the primary role of the defences was for the outward defence of London, the Venetian Secretary noted on 27 March 1643:

As Peter Harrington suggests ‘the fact that the London defences resembled siegework lines of circumvallation rather than defences may have been more than coincidental’.53

The district had a growing reputation for radicalism, its Puritanism more radical than that of the conservative City and there was the underlying danger that long-standing differences between suburbs and City would manifest themselves as rifts in London’s support for Parliament.54 There were occasions of unrest within London throughout the period, varying from ‘neutralism’ – calls for peace and complaints against conditions brought about by the war55 – to Royalist plots, the most famous of which was in May 1643 and has become known as ‘Waller’s Plot’ after the poet and MP, Edmund Waller.56 The conspirators resolved, ‘To seize upon the Outworks, Forts, Tower of London, Magazines, Gates and other Places of Importance in the City’.57

But it was not just the Royalists who threatened the defences. In August 1643, a multitude (the majority were women who were generally described as ‘the wives of substantial citizens or women whose husbands were serving in one army or the other’) gathered outside Parliament to protest for peace. They were forcibly dispersed by Sir William Waller’s cavalry but angrily vowed their intention to return in greater numbers the next day and threatened to demolish all the new fortifications.58

The London Trained Bands manned the defences and a 1644 pamphlet outlines the arrangements:

The need for the Trained Bands to serve elsewhere led to the suggestion that volunteers and those who were unable to render full time military service due to business commitments should man the fortifications.

The summer of 1643 was the high-water mark of the Royalist war effort and subsequent setbacks in both the north and west lessened the threat upon London. As they never did mount an attack on London, it is doubtful whether the artillery emplaced within the defences was ever fired in anger. One occasion when the artillery was fired was during the state funeral of the Earl of Essex, on 22 October 1646 when, after seven in the evening, a signal was given to the fort in Southwark to fire a great cannon. This was the signal for the next fort, at Vauxhall, to do likewise and so on around the Lines of Communication. This ritual was performed three times.60

Only once did an army march upon London’s defences, but this was neither Royalist army nor that of a foreign power. The army in question was the New Model, Britain’s first professional force, created by a Parliamentary Ordinance of 17 February 1645, and that which inflicted the crushing defeats upon the Royalists in 1645 and 1646.

However successful the army, it still required to be paid. With the war virtually over, Parliament was petitioned for the disbandment of the New Model, largely because of the financial burden it placed upon the eastern counties. Parliament’s inability or unwillingness to pay the army led to rifts between Parliament and the New Model. Increased radicalism within the ranks in response to the calls of disbandment widened these rifts that were further compounded by religious differences, Parliament and the City being largely Presbyterian and the army, Independent.

Charles I, who had surrendered himself to the Scots on 5 May 1646, now found himself used as a bargaining piece. Handed over to Parliament on 30 January 1647 in return for arrears of pay to the Scots army, he was taken by the New Model on 4 June 1647.

The New Model Army marched upon London in July 1647 and attempts by Parliament to raise a force in opposition met with little success. Political divisions within the City and the traditional animosity between the City and Southwark meant that the Army under General Fairfax did not have to test the defences; he was able to enter London on 6 August 1647 by way of Southwark, which had surrendered itself early on that morning.

The army’s entry was a triumphant parade. The forts not already occupied by the New Model were surrendered to Fairfax and duly occupied. On 19 September, Giovanni Battista Nani, Venetian Ambassador in France reported:

Parliament passed the necessary Ordinance to enable the Trained Bands to pull down the guardhouses and to sell the timber. Citizens were invited to send their servants to assist with the task. The guns were taken away to the Tower and the demolition work probably commenced by the end of September. Just how much demolition and ‘slighting’ was undertaken is unclear, probably not complete levelling but the destruction to the emplacements and parapets, enough to ensure that any restoration would involve a great deal of new construction and labour.62 On 22 October 1647 the Venetian Ambassador noted:

Just where these three forts were built is unknown and it is not definite whether they were built at all. Was one of them in the Whitechapel area, guarding the eastern approaches? London was threatened during the Second Civil War of 1648 when Royalist insurgents seized Bow Bridge on 3 June in the hope that London would rise for the king. They were disappointed and in turn retreated to Colchester and defeat.

By the end of the century, the Mount was an overgrown local curiosity, which, according to at least one account, was where some of the debris from the Great Fire of London had been deposited.64 Daniel Defoe mentioned the Mount in his A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain of 1724–6.65

By the middle of the 18th century, the remains of the fort could still be seen,66 and the Mount was a popular local landmark, crossed by several paths. Even at the end of the 18th century it is likely that traces of the defensive ditches could be seen, as a 1795 account gives a height of the Mount from ‘ground level’. The same account noted that the ‘east end remains very perfect whilst on the west side some houses have been built. The surface on the top, except where it has been dug away, is perfectly level’.67

At the end of the 1740s, the newly established London Hospital was looking for a suitable site for new premises. The area to the east of Whitechapel Mount was identified and the first stone of the new hospital was laid in June 1752. Building progressed in stages, as funding would allow; the central block was completed in 1759 while the west wing was not finished until 1778.68 By the end of the 18th century, both the Hospital and the City of London itself had plans to build upon the Mount. In 1801:

The Hospital’s case being stronger, the City agreed, at its own expense, to take down the Mount and cart it away:

So, after 170 years, Whitechapel Mount was gone, its location marked by the streets which were built upon the site, Mount Place, Mount Terrace and Mount Street. Writing in 1962, A E Clark-Kennedy noted:

Recent building work has since obliterated these last traces. Considering their size, there is only one memorial to their existence, a plaque on the wall of the Police station in Borough High Street. The rapid expansion of London during the hundred years following their construction erased the majority of the sites In 1746, Cromwell Mortimer noted traces of just eight of the original 23 forts.

With no remains, the only way the course of the defences can be traced is through topography and archaeology. Although contemporary maps showed the location of various sites (John Rocque’s map of 1746 clearly shows the site of Whitechapel Mount in addition to several others),72 the first known map of the Lines of Communication did not appear until 1720 when William Stukeley’s British Coins included a plan showing 15 roughly-drawn forts.73 The most well-known is George Vertue’s plan, published in 1738, showing the Lines of Communication against a map of London. Since then, a number of historians have studied and/or mapped the Lines of Communication, most recently, Victor Smith and Peter Kelsey in 1996.74

There is even less archaeological evidence, a fact emphasised in 1975 by David Sturdy who wrote:

The only major archaeological investigation of the defences was that undertaken by the Museum of London Archaeological Services on the Whitechapel site in 1992 and 1994.76

Regardless of their exact location, the Lines of Communication defined London. As William Lithgow wrote:

It has long been debated whether the Lines of Communication could have been defended. London’s were amongst the largest urban defensive systems in early modern Europe and the Venetian Secretary considered them ‘most difficult to defend’.78

Never put to the test, could the defences have withstood a prolonged siege? If the Royalists had considered a siege, the construction of necessary siege works would have been a massive undertaking and could probably only have been attempted if the Parliamentarian armies had first been defeated in the field. However, if the Royalists had been this victorious in the field, would not Parliament have sued for peace before London was threatened?

The other possibility was direct assault. But this would have been costly in terms of men and following the number of lives lost in the Royalist storm of Bristol on 26 July 1643, Charles I was reluctant to employ the same tactics again (he refused to storm Gloucester in August 1643, instead opting for a siege which was lifted on 6 September 1643). London would have to be stormed in a number of places at once. Did the Royalists have sufficient troops with which to do this and could the three armies, which may have been used in such an attack, be successfully coordinated? As it turned out, localisation (the refusal of troops to move away from home while there was still a threat from hostile forces, a factor which affected both sides during the wars) was probably the deciding factor that prevented an attack on London in 1643.

Although never put to the test, the value of the defences was recognised by many. Would Fairfax call for their removal so readily if they were not of strategic importance? Following their removal, London faced the possible threat of attack on at least three occasions, by the Royalists in 1648, by the Dutch (who raided the Medway) in 1667 and by the Jacobites in 1745. How would London have stood up to attack on any one of these occasions? Indeed, as Victor Smith has discussed, on both occasions the re-establishment of the Lines of Communication was considered.79

While there was the possibility of both rifts with the City and neutralist opposition, it was the threat of a Royalist attack on London during the first year of the War that tested the loyalty of Londoners called upon to defend the capital. Lord Mayor Isaac Pennington was responsible for organising London’s defences, an anonymous pamphleteer from 1643 who described him as ‘the chiefest raiser and promoter of the workes and fortifications’.80

But was one man’s zeal in preserving the Protestant religion81 or the defence of Parliament sufficient reason to persuade thousands of Londoners to come to the defence of the capital and to labour in wet and freezing conditions upon the defences?82 For many, if not the majority, it was not. For them it was a matter of self-preservation. It should be remembered that Londoners were fed a diet of Protestant propaganda – the horrors of the Thirty Years War, atrocities in Ireland and, far nearer to home, Prince Rupert’s sack of Brentford in November 1642. The feelings of many Londoners were summed up by the commander of the London Trained Bands, Phillip Skippon, who, on the morning of the Battle of Turnham Green in November 1642, said, ‘Remember the Cause is for God; and for the defence of your selves, your wives, and children’.83

Considering the effort which was put into the construction of the Lines of Communication, the question arises was the Royalist threat that great that the defences needed to be constructed quickly in order to protect the capital? Or was the construction of the defences seen as a way of channelling Londoners’ energy away from protesting at the way the war was going and the conditions they were living under? Regardless of the various, sometimes conflicting, often personal motives, the construction of the defences was a massive task, and: