It
was my last day in York and having an hour to kill before catching the train
home I went for a walk through the Museum Gardens. There, not far from the entrance stands the
Multangular Tower.
The
Multangular Tower is a defensive tower that was part of the Roman fortress of
Eboracum. It stood at the western corner
of the fortress and is the last surviving one of eight similar towers that
stood along the fortress wall. The tower
got its name from it having ten sides.
The
tower and the surviving part of the original fortress wall were incorporated
into the defences of Medieval York. The
top three metres of the tower and wall were added in the Thirteenth Century when
the fortifications around the city were strengthened The original Roman parts of the tower date
from around the third Century.
There
is some debate on who originally had the tower and walls constructed, as in whether
it was the Emperor Septimius Severus who had his headquarters in York between
AD 208 and 211, or Constantine the Great, who was proclaimed Emperor of Rome
while in York in AD 306. We’ll probably
never know, but I think everyone can agree that they are bloody ancient, having
stood on this spot for around one thousand eight hundred years or so. The things they must have seen…oh, if only
walls could talk.
I
left the Skulferatu that accompanied me on my stroll around the Museum Gardens,
in a gap in the medieval wall around the back of the tower.
The
coordinates for the location of the Skulferatu are –
Latitude 53.961702
Longitude -1.086668
I
used the following sources for information on the Multangular Tower –
Historic England – Multangular
Tower and Wall Attached to South East
Historic
England - Multangular Tower and Wall attached to South East
York Museum Gardens
The
Multangular Tower - York Museum Gardens
Information board on the tower
walls
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