It has been suggested that the Lanthorn, Wakefield, Bell and Middle Towers in the Tower of London may stand on the sites of four of the bastions of the Roman river wall, though this may be a myth.
The rest of the story of the town walls is largely one of repeated restoration. About the year 886 King Alfred repaired them, after a long period of decay and doubtless of damage at the hands of the Danes, and during the later Danish invasions the walls (and the citizens) fulfilled their task well, so that the Saxon chronicler was able to write of a harassed London, "Praise be to God that it yet standeth sound."
The Norman Conquest was followed by the building of a castle immediately within each of the two riverside angles of the walls, which thus formed for a time the curtain of a part of the bailey of the Tower on the east and of Baynard's Castle on the west.