Berwick-upon-Tweed

We took a stroll around Berwick-upon-Tweed’s Elizabethan Wall on a sunny spring morning. It was a beautiful walk with stunning scenery and we learnt some of Berwick’s lesser known facts along the way!

Berwick’s town walls were built over 400 years ago, but they are still almost completely intact and stand today, as strong as they ever did.  They are 1¼ miles in length and they completely surround the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed.  Originally Edward I commissioned a defensive wall around the town, but only a few crumbled remains of that wall still exist.  New ramparts were commissioned by Elizabeth I to create an impregnable defence against the marauding Scots who wanted Berwick to be part of Scotland.

Today Berwick’s Elizabethan Walls are a world famous piece of architecture.  They are the only example of bastioned town walls in Britain and one of the best preserved examples in Europe.  At the time they were built in 1558, they were the most expensive undertaking of England’s Golden Age.  They were built to an Italian design containing bastions which were designed to allow gunfire to cover every part of the wall.  Outside of the curtain wall and bastions, there were wide ditches, filled with water designed to deter any potential invader.

Access to the town itself was via 4 heavily guarded gates. These gates remain the main accesses to the town today.

Berwick-upon-Tweed is the most northerly town in England.  Situated at the mouth of the River Tweed near the border between Scotland and England, the town suffered centuries of conflict as control of this strategic town passed back and forth between the two rival Kingdoms until the late 1600s.  The walls were also used for defence during the Jacobite Risings of 1745-46, the Napoleonic invasions of 1799-1815, and during the World Wars, where guns and canons were sited here to protect from attack via the North Sea.  These ramparts were not only incredibly important in the defence of our country, they make Berwick one of the most important fortified towns in Europe.

This statue was erected in 1908 in memory of Lady Jerningham (1850-1902).  Her first husband was Charles Mather of Longridge Towers, Berwick.  Her second husband, Hubert Jerningham, was a British diplomat and Member of Parliament for Berwick.  He later became Governor of Mauritius, then Trinidad and Tobago, where he was knighted for services in a cyclone. Lady Jerningham was a very kind and generous, philanthropic lady whom her husband and the town of Berwick wished to commemorate after her death in 1902.

The Bank Hill Ice House was built in the early 18^th century to store blocks of ice which were used for packing fish, usually salmon, for onward transportation to London.  It was still in use as an ice house in the 1930s, before being designated as an air raid shelter during WWII.

At various points along the walls, you’ll find references to the famous Manchester artist, L.S. Lowry.  Lowry was famous for his matchstick-men paintings.  He often holidayed in Berwick and the Lowry Trail follows in his footsteps and shows you many of the places in town that he liked to visit.  The trail also identifies his lesser known works of the cobbled streets and seaside scenes of Berwick-upon-Tweed and the surrounding area.

The ramparts are open all year round and entry is free.  The walls are well maintained with fully accessible paths.  Be careful though – there are a number of hidden drops and in some places the walls are 11 metres high – don’t fall off!