r timber building. There be many
fair merchants' houses, and in the south-east part was a college of
Grey Friars. Here was also an hospital called God's House, founded by
two merchants, appropriated since to Queen's College, Oxford."

Of all this what remains? Happily more than might seem possible
considering the enormous modern development of the place. The town of
Southampton stood looking south-west upon a tongue of land thrust out
south into the water with the estuary of the Itchen upon the east, and
Southampton Water upon the west, upon the south were the vast mud-flats
swept by every tide which the great modern docks now occupy. The town
was, as we have seen, enclosed by walls, perhaps by Canute, certainly
by the Normans, and these seem to have been enlarged by King John, and
rebuilt and repaired after the French raid of 1338. They formed a rude
quadrilateral, roughly seven hundred yards from north to south, and
three hundred from east to west, were from twenty-five to thirty feet
high and of varying thickness. Something of them still remains,
especially upon the west of the town over the quays. Here we have two
great portions of the old wall which is practically continuous from the
site of the Bugle Tower upon the south, to the site of the Bigglesgate
about half-way up this western side. This portion includes two of the
old gates, the West Gate and the Blue Anchor Postern. Beyond the site
of the Bigglesgate the old wall has been destroyed as far as the
Castle, but from there it still stands all the way to the Arundel Tower
at the north-west corner of the town. So much for the western front.
Upon the north the wall is broken down at the western end, the Bargate,
which still stands, being isolated, but beyond two portions remain
complete as far as the Polymond Tower at the north-east angle. Upon the
east of the town there is very little standing until we come to the
southern corner, where God's House Tower and the South-East Gate
remain. Upon the south almost nothing is left.

Southampton in its mediaeval greatness had eight gates, of which, as we
see, four remain: two upon the west, the West Gate and the Blue Anchor
Postern; one upon the north, the Bargate; upon the east, or rather at
the south-eastern angle of the walls, God's House or South-East Gate;
upon the south none at all.

The West Gate is a plain but beautiful work of the fourteenth century,
a great square tower over a pointed arch, under which is the