"Wargaming 1st St Albans 1455 in 2005" Topic

Covid lock down here in the UK has led to me raiding my photo files.

These have never been published before:

link

The Lance and Longbow Society took park in Salute 2005 in London and staged a re-fight of 1st St Albans in 28mm using the Society's 'Poleaxed' rules.

I was Yorkist and we made a fair go of getting through the barricades before the Earl of Warwick's decisive crossing of the town ditch unopposed. The rules worked fairly well and a Yorkist victory was on the cards when we eventually finished.

None of these are my figures as I play in 15mm.

Barry

Very nice Barry
Clif

@clifblkskull:
And not my best camera either. These were taken with a very crude Kodak point-and-shoot before I got a DSLR.

B

I always wondered what St Albans "walls" would have looked like at this point in time. I always pictured something like a ditch and post creation. Thanks for posting.

The Tonman Ditch was a ditch and bank construction with the bank on the inside and a wooden palisade atop the bank. The remains of the bank can be seen in several places in modern St. Albans.

Oh and the ditch wasn't filled with water. It was a ditch, not a moat.

@Uesugi Kenshin:
I have a couple of books on town walls and town defences in Britain. Most town walls were nominal and served an administrative or legal function by defining the limit of the town's civic powers.
Other roles included drainage, sewerage, rubbish dump, keeping out animals (wild or domestic) and keeping out the unwelcome such as pedlars, thieves, beggars, prostitutes, etc.
The town gate could be little more than a bar across the road which might be patrolled by townspeople or watchmen.
I have a book of 16th and 17th century English town maps which shows St Alban's virtually unchanged from the battle. The ditch is not visible but the slight hill slope is shown.

@Major B:
I am aware that bits of bank survive – as to the existence of an actual palisade I would be more sceptical. I was at Pickering Castle last year (part-palisaded until the 14th century). Contemporary records for Pickering show that palisade had to be serviced on a three-year rolling cycle. As St Alban's was not a frontier town – and the burgesses probably frugal – I would imagine there was nothing more than a domestic fence, and a few outside toilets, at most points.

I was not responsible for any of the models as I do not do 28mm wargaming. If it was an English ditch, and it had been raining, there would be at least water or mud in it. I recall we treated it as a minor obstacle.

I also note:
link

which echoes the London ditch. Part of St Alban's was called Houndspath while in London part is STILL called 'Houndsditch' allegedly due to the practice of throwing dead dogs into the town ditch.
This may indicate how little regard was paid to town defences in the 'soft' south of England.
link
A 1989 excavation actually uncovered several dog skeletons in Houndsditch.

Town ditches could vary in scale. I have walked the defences of Sandwich in Kent several times retracing the famous French raid. This had a wet moat at the time and substantial banks. These banks were also used for grazing, some horticulture and an archery butts.
Rye and Winchelsea have substantial remaining gates but traces of the walls are few and far between and may have been little more than ditch and bank.
link
link
Norwich, as England's second city, went for major walls and was one of the first English cities to replace its ballistas with cannon in the 1370s/80s.
A decade later Norwich built the Cow Tower for firearms and artillery only:
link
I have described this as England's first pillbox in the above photo captions.
B

@Warspite, thanks Mate, amazing stuff.

"In 1265 the town was so strongly defended that it gained the nickname "Little London", a name still in use 40 years later."
link

If it was that strongly defended it is more likely to have had a palisade than not.

As to the reference to Houndspath:
"Following the line of what is now St. Peter's Road and Marlborough Road was a lane, called Houndspath, and
adjoining this lane was Townmansdike before mentioned, to which lane and ditch the gardens of the houses in St. Peter's Street mostly extended. "
PDF link

@Major B:
In 1265 civil wars were still a major issue and had been very local and very recent.

See: link

In 1455 civil war was a distant memory. Without modern wood treatments timber rots at an amazing rate. I know that to my own recent cost. As the town had never replaced its defences in stone (many medieval English towns didn't) I very much doubt that the palisade was either workable or substantial. And the fact that the streets had to be barricaded meant that very little had been spent on defence.

Sandwich (on the coast and thus vulnerable to French raids) had substantial gatehouses on all the entrances but no trace of anything apart from banks and a wide wet ditch.

Gatehouses went up first as they were:
1) guarding the crossing of the town ditch and covered the point of greatest risk
2) a symbol of power, influence and continuity.
A decent gatehouse would attract merchants and traders with the promise of security. The upper chamber might house the guards or night watch and might even serve as the town's council chamber.

If St Alban's was still much defended in 1455 then the money would have been spent on gatehouses first – there were no gatehouses around the town but a handsome one just for the abbey.

So… very little chance of a decent palisade.
Expect a town ditch, wet, muddy and smelly from discarded 'night soil' and a cattle-proof fence at best. And a couple of dead dogs.

Barry

There was no need for gatehouses at St Albans because the roads into the town from the east all had to cross the Tonman Ditch and it was sufficient to barricade these at night by the use of "bars".

The fighting at the bars featured at 1st St Albans. Clearly the defenders considered them to be the only viable access routes. Until Warwick proved otherwise…

Did you notice the reference in the link I gave?
"and later we find that Abbot Whethamsted added to the defences of the town. "
Abbot John of course was the abbot from 1420 – 1440 and agAin from 1451 TO 1465.
Given that he didn't build gatehouses, perhaps he built a palisade?

@Major B:
I think you have misunderstood me. At other towns the first item to be built or re-built was always the gatehouse – King's Lynn, Southampton, Canterbury's West Gate and Sandwich are good examples. The same with castle building – at Kirby Muxloe's unfinished castle the gatehouse was among the first items built. See:
link

By your own admission St Alban's only had bars at the entrances so if that is their idea of a 'gate' then the 'wall' is unlikely to have anything other than a simple ditch with an earth bank behind it and I would seriously doubt how good the "Little London" ditch would still have been. A couple of hundred years of being used as the town dump post-1265 will not have improved it. There is little prestige in ditch clearing.

I would interpret the reference to Abbot Whethamsted as rather vague but it could refer to the abbey and its defences. The surviving and formidable abbey gate dates from 1365. The abbey's walled precinct would certainly serve as a last refuge for the town. Perhaps he added to that precinct wall and brought it up to the standard of the 1365 gate? Given the abbey's position it would easily count as being IN the town and not next to it.

As with other towns (see above) defence money nearly always went on gates first. If the abbot started to spend money on the town's defences he would have started with a gatehouse – as a matter of both town prestige or his own personal prestige. "Look what I have done for you" etc.

Given my experience with other medieval towns the relationship between town and abbey was rarely cordial.
At Sherborne, Dorset, the town rioted and burned the abbey in the 15th century:
link

Barry

Your assumption of a lack of a palisade implies that the townspeople thought the ditch and bank were a sufficient defence. That is an assumption I find hard to believe. Given that when Warwick attacked the ditch and bank appeared to be no obstacle, why did the Yorkists only attack at the bars?

One explanation for that is that the presence of a palisade on the bank made an attack difficult if not impossible. Presumably Warwick found a weakness ( a break in the palisade perhaps?) that made his attack possible?

At the end of the day however, this is all speculation and neither of us can prove the point one way or the other.