The City Wall at Vine Street Location: Vine Street, EC3N 2HT [map] Open: 9am - 6pm (bank holidays excepted) Admission: free Seven word summary: a very old wall and some rubbish Website:citywallvinestreet.org Time to set aside: half an hour
This Vine Street is in the City of London squished innocuously between Jewry Street and Minories, precisely where you wouldn't think to look. It's very quiet, in part because the central section's been pedestrianised but mainly because it sits adrift amid a sea of anonymous office blocks. And one of those blocks has an unexpected surprise in the basement, a chunky relic from the first millennium presented in a manner that's both exceptional and jarring. If you haven't been yet you should visit.
The premise: In Roman times Londinium was surrounded by a thick stone wall intended to keep marauders out, which gradually fell into disrepair after the Romans left and in many places became absorbed into the fabric of the city. Parts of it are still visible, most famously near the Barbican and the Tower of London. What we have here is a 10m-long section in good nick including the base of an original defensive bastion (all surviving bastions elsewhere being medieval rebuilds). It was recently re-excavated by archaeologists during the construction of upmarket student accommodation and has been incorporated into the new block as a visitable attraction which opened last year.
Access: Getting in is harder than it should be and easier than I feared. This is because the owners have adopted the new petty paradigm, increasingly popular since the pandemic, of expecting you to pre-book. "Advanced booking is essential" says the website, which drills you to select a half-hour slot on a day of your choice before you turn up. This is not how I roll, mainly because I don't know in advance precisely when I'll arrive and have no intention of constraining my schedule to fit a needless restriction, so I ignored it. If absolutely none of your sessions are 'sold out', I thought, hopefully you'll just let me in.
The way in, it turns out, is mid-building along an alleyway so glassy you can look down and see most of what you're about to see. I found the right door and could immediately tell I wasn't going to get on with whichever procedural curmudgeon had designed the entry procedures. "To see our opening hours please scan here" said a sticker beside a QR code, while another over-expectantly read "Please scan this to book your free visit". I have no intention of stooping to that level just to pass through a door, I thought. The door warned me it was automatic and shouldn't be pushed but I could see no obvious button to press. It's possible the button had been covered over by the final notice, "Please wait patiently with your booking so staff can give you access", so I waited patiently but nothing happened. I thought I could see a desk through the glass but it was empty, and only when it became occupied did a member of staff notice me and let me in.
I progressed across an elevated walkway through one of those little perspex gates normally operated by office workers with lanyards. "Do you have a booking?" asked the member of staff and I had to confess I didn't. I worried that he was going to demand I jumped through smartphone hoops like they do at the Science Museum, but thankfully it swiftly became apparent this wasn't going to be required. He did however want a name to enter onto his tablet because the Procedural Curmudgeon had deemed it necessary. It's fun on such occasions to claim your name is Arpeggio McSyzygy, or some other ridiculously complex tongue twister, but I was feeling generous and offered a fiction that was very easy to spell. It was also tempting to ask "Why do you need a name anyway, is this a museum or a police state?", but I suspect the answer would have been "Because the Procedural Curmudgeon won't let this transaction proceed until I enter something" so it wouldn't have been helpful.
The guide gave a short spiel about what to expect and also how to get out again, because the Procedural Curmudgeon hadn't made that simple either. I felt a bit sorry for the guide repeating this spiel over and over, along with registering bookings and waiting around a lot for people to arrive. I could tell he did a lot of waiting because no other visitors were present, a hunch confirmed later when I looked at the paucity of comments in the Visitors Book. I also made the mistake of trotting down the stairs far too quickly, as directed, whereas one of the best views of the City Wall is from the admin walkway which is why I don't have any photos of that. The view's not quite so good downstairs so all I can offer is this shot of the back of the wall with no floating cafe in the background.
The experience: The thing about Roman street level is it's beneath our current street level, hence the wall is in the basement. This is partly what helped preserve it, first rediscovered in 1905 during the demolition of the Metropolitan Bonded Warehouse. What you can see today is a 2m-thick wall made of Kentish ragstone blocks, intermittently layered with red tiles for strength, all supported on brick piles added in 1905 for stability. Below all that are steel jacks inserted during construction of the current building and steel props added afterwards, because nobody takes any risks with a Scheduled Monument. Also just behind you is a pointless set of lockers for storage purposes, presumably added by the Procedural Curmudgeon because the entire attraction is in one room and there's nothing your bag could bash into anyway.
It's not all about the wall, otherwise the wow factor might fade quite quickly. It's also about the archaeological remains found alongside, most of it thrown away by its original owners who might have been Roman soldiers, Tudor cooks or Georgian publicans. They found a heck of a lot of rubbish and a lot of that is displayed here along an entire wall, deftly arrayed and labelled. The Roman remains are perhaps the most special - denarii! amphorae! tesserae! - but the more plentiful later detritus is fascinating too. Also whoever wrote the labels underneath is particularly good at their job, mixing facts with exposition and empathy, and also capable of referencing the iniquities of the slave trade without getting patronisingly didactic. Pride of place goes to the contents of two cesspits found backing onto the wall, likely filled by neighbouring tradesmen in the 1760s, and don't be surprised if you spend more time looking at the rubbish than at the wall.
The wall is splendid though, especially once you've passed round to the front (moving in a few steps from just inside Londinium to just outside). The visual impact is aided by the protrusion out front, this the chalk foundation of the original Roman tower built around 360AD and the oldest bit of bastion in the city. What struck me is how incredibly clean it all looks, as opposed to your usual Roman remains exposed to the elements for centuries. The information panels are again comprehensive and non-intrusive, and so up-to-date they recommend you go discover more about Roman London in the London Museum, which hasn't yet opened. Alongside the bastion is a mini-cinema where a looping film runs through two millennia of London's history, sometimes focusing on the local site but more generally a catalogue of marauders, plague, great fires and V1 bombs. The Curation Overlord has done a very good job.
Exit: The Procedural Curmudgeon has one more trick to play which is not adding a sign to show the way out. You don't go out the way you came in, you're supposed to pass out up a set of steps on the far side which leads to another set of swishy perspex gates whose one-way functionality is only explicit from up close. And this leads you to the most surreal part of the experience which is the open-sided cafe terrace which overlooks the entire chamber. Here patrons who haven't been to the museum (and can't gain access to it) chat over hot drinks and pastries whilst generally ignoring the Scheduled Monument. I have rarely seen such a neutrally decorated coffee shop, in this case occupied by neutrally-dressed city workers and anodyne students whose parents probably paid a small fortune so their offspring could live in one of the hutches upstairs.
Conclusion: As an Australian recently wrote in the visitors book, I Came To See Old Walls I Was Not Disappointed. I also agree with the Welsh visitor who said Needs To Be Better Known! because even a year after opening it really isn't. Hundreds of people should be filing through each day, not an intermittent trickle, especially given the free admission and incredibly convenient opening hours which span nine hours daily. Come test your mettle against the Procedural Curmudgeon and enjoy this astonishinghistoricrelicbeautifullypreserved in a pristine basement surrounded by old rubbish.
