Warden's Close, Civil War earthworks

The historian John Brand identified earthworks in the Warden's Close as relics of the Civil War siege, these are probably the linear features on Thompson's plan of 1746 and can be equated with the "complex series of ditches and ponds" destroyed without being adequately examined or recorded in the course of forming the Bath Lane car park in 1987. Following the Civil War the town wall ditch had been leased to a James Turner, who was unable to make any profit from the land because of the "trenches". By 1676 the dikes between Newgate and Warden's Close were in the hands of a Andrew Hairoppe and subsequently passed to Christopher Barker, tanner in 1695. In 1730 the open areas were occupied as gardens by a Mrs Barker and a Mr Robinson. By 1734 John Clayton, merchant, had bought Barker's right in the ground. On his death the lease passed to his brother Snow Clayton. The dikes were cultivated albeit unsuccessfully. In 1792 John Soulsby assigned part of the Dykes for construction of a Poor House, but the scheme was abandoned.