Situated at the mouth of the River Tweed near the border of two kingdoms, the town of Berwick suffered centuries of conflict, as control of the town passed back and forward between England and Scotland until the late 17th century. Each crisis brought repairs and improvements to the fortifications, culminating in the great artillery ramparts begun in 1558. These survive largely intact and make Berwick one of the most important fortified towns of Europe.
The prosperous royal burgh of Berwick had been part of Scotland for more than three centuries when, in 1292, Edward I of England declared John de Balliol King of Scotland in Berwick Castle. Edward’s feudal claims over Balliol soon led to Scottish discontent and to Scotland’s alliance with France. English policy was to make war. Berwick was captured in 1296 but retaken by Robert Bruce in 1318. The town changed sides several times before finally being recaptured by the English in 1482.
High walls and flanking towers, like those built at Berwick, were normally sufficient security against attack and damage from siege engines in the Middle Ages. But the development of gunpowder artillery in the 16th century slowly destroyed the value of traditional fortifications and it was not possible to adapt them satisfactorily.
The next development was the introduction of bastioned fortification, found first in Italy at Verona. In 1558 Mary I ordered the English military engineer Sir Richard Lee to Berwick to replace the medieval walls with a bastioned fortification system. In that year Calais had been lost to the French who urged the Scots to attack England's northern outpost.
Bastions are gun emplacements projecting from the wall, enabling defenders to fire outwards across the ditch, or alternatively to repel an enemy attacking the walls to either side. The construction of the new fortifications (which after Mary’s death in 1558 became known as the Elizabethan ramparts) continued as fast as possible but stopped in 1569 before work on the upper ramparts had begun.
By 1568, when Mary, Queen of Scots, fled to England, the Franco-Scottish threat had subsided. As it became clear that James VI of Scotland would succeed Elizabeth I as James I of England, no further work was done to the defences for the remainder of Elizabeth's reign.
The Elizabethan ramparts were modified in the 17th century and the alarm caused by the second Jacobite rising in 1745–6 ensured that they were kept in good order in the 18th century. During the Napoleonic Wars it was proposed to abandon those works that could not be used for the defence of the estuary.
The end of Berwick as a fortified town is marked in the 19th century by the enlargement of Scotsgate, the removal of the Main Guard to the rear of Palace Green and, in 1837, the creation of the pedestrian way along the ramparts.
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