Chichester Roman and Medieval Fortifications with Matt Easton 

Apologies for the terrible wind at points of this video - I have cleaned it on the audio as best as I could without losing my narrative, but it still remains strong because there was a storm brewing!

"It is not just a park, It..." That's quite the abrupt ending you've got there.

I've not a drop of English blood but England is my cultural motherland. I love English history and really appreciate your videos.

My home city, I walk those walls everyday:)

I got married in Priory Park last October and am lucky enough to live in one of Chichester’s Georgian townhouses with Victorian fireplaces and everything. Chichester is a great place to live or visit. Goodwood, Theatre, Festival of Speed, Roman ruins, Anglo Saxon and Georgian architecture, Chichester Harbour, Roman palace, Priory Park and of course the grand Cathedral.

Video quality is tops Matt.

Thanks! The excursions and adventures are fun.

Does anyone else know what Time Team is? I want to see a revival of that show, with Matt and Dr. Capwell. Someone call the BBC.

Matt should get his own BBC series - just saying.

Fantastic video. It's like all the best parts of a documentary without all the fluff.

I greatly enjoy these videos Matt. You're showing me areas I will probably never see in my life and I appreciate it.

Enjoy your sense of humour immensely with your impressive knowledge and appréciation of histoy. Great video. Un grand merci!

Damn you Matt, you are making the list of places to visit in England so long that one would have to move there for a while to be able to see it all! XD Also I love these history videos!

These kinds of visuals really help put medieval settlements into a little more context. Thank you!

Been subbed for years, never knew this video existed, and then all of a sudden it was recommended and I couldn't be happier

Matt you need a camera stick, we two are in very passionate embrace on my large curved 4k monitor.

Thank you mate for your contribution to the history of chichester. I have learnt a bit more about this beautiful area.

I read the title as "Roman and Medieval Fornication". Needless to say, was pretty disappointed.

I live in Chichester it's a very beautiful small city, one of my favourite places

Great video very informative, I live in the US and will probably never get too see these things in real life because here we live to work and taking vacations is few thank you

Very informative and entertaining video Matt! Good job and no worries regarding the wind noise. I hope Hurricane Ophelia doesn’t give y’all much trouble.

If you are ever in Italy, Lucca ,in Tuscany has Medieval walls all around the city and a Roman era amphitheater that was turned into residences. Worth a visit if you travel there. 8th century churches also.

Thanks, interesting video, would have liked your tour to carry on further! I grew up near Chichester and remember playing on the castle mound in the late '70s / early '80s. There was a lot more to the mound back then with paths working their way around and up the mound. It's been severely cleared in recent times and lost physical size.

You should come to Northumberland we have more castles and fortified buildings than any other county

Great video, I think these are a nice addition to your usual content.

i love these vids. as an american who has always loved ancient/medieval history its nice to see these places as i dont really have access to anything like it here.

Excellent video! More of these please.

Chichester is a nice town, used to live close to it. Loved the fact that that the park is a Cricket field, totally English! Like your general history stuff, Matt, please, please, do something 19th century with the excellent BritishMuzzleLoaders channel that I know you like, as I have seen your comments and he told me he follows you.

an excellent presentation. thanks

Great video, Matt--I really like these a lot, please do more.

There were a very long city wall in my home town back in 60s. And most of it was tear down to give way for condos and shopping malls.

Gotta love how off the mark recommended videos are shortly after the upload.

Can you use chaos to scale the walls? I've heard it makes a good laddah.

Thanks Matt, very enjoyable video.

We may never find out why this is not just a park with a playground. And the blame for that is solely on Mr Easton.

I like videos like this. It can be easy to miss all the old structures where you live, and these videos make me keep an eye out for them.

Its crazy that medieval asphalt has help up so well.

Thank you for your work.

I enjoy the "Matt Easton tours historical sites in England" series, because as an American touristI'm unlikely to ever visit anything outside the city of Westminster.

I dig this new style of video!

It's nice to see my hometown get some attention, whenever people ask where I was born/from I tell them they may not know it, and alas they don't

Best cliffhanger I've seen in a while, haha. Such a beautiful place

one of your best videos thanks!;-)

Tall walls with embankments are easy to build, no cranes needed. Build the wall up 5 feet then build the embankment up 5 feet so you have a nice gentle slope to carry the materials up. Gets harder as you go but it gets the job done.

Really loving these videos. Over here in Canada, I only really have a single city with fortifications that I can go see.

I really love these castle/fortification videos you're doing!

Nice, love Chichester, one of my favourite places in the country. Didn't know those walls where that old. Also, nice video quality.

Awesome content...love the history England. My personal heritage is from around northern England York area being a Weatherby. Cheers from Nova Scotia in Canada

Ok, everything with a chest is Roman

Very cool slice of history, thanks for doing this! As a side note much of my extended family lives in Chichester, Pennsylvania here in the US which no doubt takes its name from that town. However here it's pronounced "Chy-chester" as far back as I know.

I guarantee a lot of kids have pretended it's a castle without knowing though. They are intuitive like that.

I'll come to know it's not just a park with a playground.... Good job I was paying attention to the rest of the video! haha I've never had the pleasure of visiting Chichester, but I have spent some time in Canterbury, which still has an impressive mediaeval wall in situ. Are you aware of whether Canterbury's wall is a Norman re-working of a Roman wall, as with Chichester, or just a Norman construction? Canterbury might be worthy of another such video, if you've never been. (when I visited, I wasn't as interested in historical emplacements as now). Also, thanks for all of your effort and time spent making your videos, I do rather appreciate a great deal of them despite my random ribald or borderline offensive comments. (I'm higher functioning, but on rare occasions can be a little abrasive when somewhat discombobulated) Keep up the great work!

Tonbridge castle has a very well preserved motte if you are ever in the area.

That was very interesting! Thank you so much!

Love it, hope to see more of these kind of videos :)

the best video from outside that uve ever made

Very interesting video

Chester still has most of its walls you can still walk around the entire city via the walls which is neat by like one bridge if am correct since they are doing work on it.

Hope you could visit Colchester .

Shad approves this video, I'm sure =D I never saw this video, and I'm subscribed for couple of years, and I think I went through all the video and watched every one I found interesting... And I learned that 'chester' means 'castrum' =)

Are you planning to come to Portchester Castle, "the best preserved Roman fort north of the Alps"? It's pretty nice.

HD cam, very nice. I never realised you had so much grey hair!

I'm enjoying these videos! Will you be doing Guildford 'castle'? :P

now THIS, is a video quality I could get used to. Is it the same camera you used for the rusty sword vid and the other one from that 1100-1300 ruins ?

another fun fact, there were no wheelbarrows in Europe when the wall was built, so workers would have been moving stones by hand even more than we might imagine.

Great videos. It would be nice if you ever visit some places in northern Germany like Lübeck and make some videos like this there. Lübeck lost the biggest parts of his walls, as far I know, after Napoleon take over the city, so he can left the city without let back many man to hold the city in fear as he is gone he has to conquer it twice if he come back. (Sorry for my bad English. ;D)

Please,, more Seax videos, please,,,

I'm don't know much about these things, but the wooden fort in the drawing looks like it might hold 20 or 30 men in a desperate situation - quite small relative to the size of the surrounding stone walls.

Queue the Time Team theme!

Cool video. How tall is that wall on the outer side, about 20 feet high? Also curious as to why doesn't the city of Chichester re-excavate the ditch, pile it into a historically accurate sized mound, add a palisade, and keep? It's a historical landmark, make it recognizable as one. Can't be that expensive, can it? Use convict labor if you have to.

I love the parts where Matt puts in a cut to interrupt himself, haha.

When I first read the title I read Chichester with a long I.

This is the kind of thing you miss out on growing up in a country like Australia. We have so little tangible history, despite sixty-five thousand years of human occupation. The only "old" fortifications are 20th century coastal defenses left over from the world wars. If I went to England or Europe I probably wouldn't even notice this kind of thing because all our earthworks are for flood mitigation or noise control.

Anybody else's stomach flip a little when he held the camera over the wall?

4:54 Except when the king is the bandit.

Ah the Roman Tire swing, seen across the world.

Was it a European swallow or an African swallow? Also, the land rover was Roman or Norman? ... jokes aside a very nice video and the sound quality is just fine!

Have you gone to Battle Abbey this weekend for the Battle of Hastings reenactment? I couldn't make it this year, and I would love to see your perspective on it.

thanks Matt, great video... now I don't need to go to "Chic" chester :)

Good example of fortified city would be the city of Dubrovnik in Croatia.

10:23 2nd "viking age"*, the collapse of the bronze age had lots of reports on "the sea people" that resembles the descriptions on the viking raids (this was over 1000 before the vikings), so 300 something would have being the second by your analogy

Gods damnit Matt, here I thought you were the bloody god of storms. Get it together, m8!

Wonderful! Now, where does Groo come in?

I wonder if the wall might have seemed even higher when it was in active use. Do you have any land survey information for the area outside the wall? It's possible it was much lower back then.

For more detail on Roman Chichester: www.academia.edu/18161327/Chronological_trail_Roman_Chichester_on_display_The_Novium_Museum_

How are you travelling about? Sometimes I feel like I need to drive out from London more often.

You should walk the Roman wall near me and it's forts, it'll take you three days to do it though. :P

Silchester is an interesting place. Good walk around the walls. Amphitheatre and hypocausts, from memory. And dinky little museum. www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/silchester-roman-city-walls-and-amphitheatre/

... and Silchester eagle in Reading Museum en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silchester_eagle Copy of Bayuex Tapestry as well.

For those unimpressed by the wall remnant, it's important to remember that it's just the filler core of the wall; the facing stones and ramparts have long since been cannibalized.

i thought the migration period didn't start until after the romans abandoned england. I was under the impression that it was the britons who invited the saxons over from mainland europe to aid in the fight against the celts/iron age scotts. and that after the fact the saxons then turned on the britons taking england and its wealth for themselves, driving the native brits to the area of great britain now reffered to as wales where they would then become known later as the welsh.

Since you're doing Roman things at the moment, I thought you might also do a video on this find, since it also puts you in Lindybeige's area: www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/part-hadrians-wall-been-found-13705748 However, I didn't realize it's five hours from London to Newcastle - that's about the same time to drive from Portland to Medford (Oregon, USA). No wonder you two don't collaborate on videos more often! 😄

To what extent would the outer surrounding trees have been cleared away so that approaching badguys would be seen and/or for other reasons?

3:00 , do you carry the umbrella/ stick just for possible bartitsu opportunities?

It looks like a great place for a LARP game or a reenacting show. What do you think, Matt?

If i ever get over there, I will have to check out Tarporly Abby. I have reason to believe that a relative was rector there in 1499.

Was that an original medieval land rover?

8:15 is the camera at your head's height? or are you just holding it forward (shoulder's height)?

The most important thing about Chitchester is learning how to spell it if you dont want to get bottled by locals

How important or large was Chichester during the middle ages? But don't you need a bishop for a cathedral? BTW, as far as I know, castra was always used in plural.