What are the Ragged Staff Gates in Gibraltar?
Short answer
Ragged Staff Gates are gateways through Gibraltar's old sea wall, just south of South Bastion, where stores were landed and many travellers once came ashore. The first gate was cut through the wall in 1736, and the gates seen today appear to have been remodelled in the 1930s so that traffic could pass both ways.
Detailed answer
The gates run through the Line Wall Curtain just south of South Bastion, across the old Southport Ditch, next to Ragged Staff Flank and the Ragged Staff Guard. An earlier medieval sea gate is thought to have stood close by.
The first Ragged Staff Gate was cut through the wall in 1736. It led out to Ordnance Wharf, a wharf built that year by a contractor to the Victualling Office to land provisions near the magazine. The wharf ran about 350 feet into the bay and was reached by a flight of stone steps with a drawbridge that was lowered every morning and raised every night.
In 1841 a senior engineer, Major General Sir John Jones, reported on the defences. He called Ragged Staff an ill-conditioned spot where most foreigners and strangers disembarked, and said its unmilitary appearance struck everyone with astonishment. The defences were rebuilt and the work was finished in August 1844. Pedestrian gates were cut beside the main gate in 1843 and in 1921. A larger gate for vehicles was cut around the turn of the twentieth century, and the gates appear to have been remodelled in the 1930s as two gates so that traffic could flow both ways.
Above the gates is a concrete mount that held a Maxim machine gun during the First World War. In the Second World War an anti-aircraft searchlight stood on South Bastion, and in 1942 an anti-tank gun was placed at the entrance to the Ragged Staff Tunnel nearby.
Nobody is sure where the name comes from. The Emperor Charles V had crossed ragged staffs in his coat of arms, and crossed ragged staffs were also the emblem on Spanish army battle flags in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, so the name may come from such an emblem placed near the gate. Another theory links it to the bear and ragged staff badge of the Earls of Warwick.