ed passage-way of fine proportions, a work
of the fourteenth century and the upper of a great hall, the Guildhall
now used as a court room. The original gate, of course, was Norman, and
this seems to have endured until about 1330 two towers were built on
either side, without the gate, and a new south front added. In the
first years of the fifteenth century a new north front was contrived,
and this remains more or less as we see it. Of old the gate was reached
by a drawbridge across a wide moat.

Beyond the Bargate we come to the Polymond Tower or the Tower of St
Denys, beautiful with creepers. This would seem to be in some way
connected with the Priory of St Denys which held all the churches in
the town, as we shall see. As for its other name of Polymond, it would
seem to get it from that John Polymond, who, in the fourteenth century,
from which time the tower, as we see it, dates, was nine times mayor of
Southampton.

As for the God's House Gateway, to reach it we must cross the town. It
is a plain but charming work of two periods, the gate proper being of
the thirteenth century, while the tower with the two-storied building
attached to it is of the fourteenth. From the beginning of the
eighteenth century until 1855 it was used as the town gaol.

The old town of Southampton, a town within a town, is a fascinating
study, the interest of its gates and old walls is inexhaustible, but
apart from these it has little architectural beauty to boast of. For
all that it is amusing to linger there, if only to solve the problems
that time has contrived for us. Among these not the least is that of
the first site of the town. Not one of the churches in Southampton is
of any great beauty or interest, but it is astonishing to find that the
mother church is not in the town at all, but at least half a mile
outside it upon the north. Leland, as I have already said, was told,
when he was in Southampton in 1546, that the first town did not occupy
the site of that we see but was further to the north, where St Mary's
stands. The fact that St Mary's is the mother church would seen to
confirm this. Moreover, there is no mention in the Domesday Survey of
any church at all within the borough of "Hantune," and though we may
think that the church of St John then existed, St John's was never the
mother church; this was St Mary's which possessed all the tithes of the
town. In the time of Henry II. we find the King granting to the Priory
of St Den