| Date | 6 August 2010 |
|---|---|
| Source | Slough Observer |
| Reference | VP-0001 |
| Volume | Views of the Past |
| Collection | Views of the Past |
Transcript
Castle Moat was used as the town’s sewer
Views of the past by Elias Kupfermann
WELCOME to the very first edition of my local history column.
Over the next few weeks I will share some of the images which will appear in my new book, entitled Vanished Windsor, which contains many old photographs of buildings and scenes in central Windsor which have long since disappeared.
We start in the very heart of the historic town of Windsor, in Lower Thames Street. The painting illustrated here (below) is a view of the street from the early nineteenth century, showing buildings which were built against the curtain wall of the Castle, within the Castle’s external ditch. This painting currently hangs in the upper storey of the Guildhall.
Until about the late thirteenth century, the Castle was very much a defensive structure but, slowly, in more peaceful times, its external defensive moat or ditch started to silt up. During the fourteenth century, buildings started to be built within the ditch adjacent to Thames Street.
This building programme was extended up to the Henry VIII Gateway in the sixteenth century. The remains of the ditch functioned as an open sewer to the rear of these properties.
During the period when King George III resided at Windsor, contemporary façades were given to the earlier seventeenth-century buildings, as the town was considered to have been neglected by the earlier Hanoverian monarchs.
This was probably Windsor’s first recorded town improvement scheme and shops and other buildings were updated to the very latest taste in fashion during the 1780s and ’90s.
By the middle of the nineteenth century, many of these buildings were in a bad state of repair. Those adjacent to the Henry VIII gateway were removed as part of the major renovation of the castle by Jeffrey Wyatville in the 1820’s.
Between 1851 and 1857, the houses built in the former Castle ditch further down Thames Street were demolished as part of another general improvement scheme for Windsor.
The area where these houses once stood was either paved or grassed over, creating the present-day landscape. The earthworks of the external ditch can now be seen adjacent to the curtain wall of the Castle, running parallel to Castle Hill.
Images
