Talk:Widdershin Gate

Small problem

Nothing called the "Widdershin Gate" is marked on the updated city map. I have gone back to the original The Streets of Ankh-Morpork but there is no trace of a Widdershin Gate here either. The The Discworld Companion and The New Discworld Companion do not list it.

I am wondering, as this is a reference from the very first Discworld book where a lot of references were not fully formed, if this was later renamed. "Deosil" (Turnwise?) is the opposite direction to "widdershins". The gate directly opposite to the Deosil Gate was left un-named on the original The Streets of Ankh-Morpork. you might expect this to be the Widdershin Gate, but in the updated map, this has been renamed the Trading Gate. COM, if I recall rightly, said that Rincewind and Twoflower, on the night of the Great Fire, left the city with every intention of going to Chirm. This would have involved leaving by a gate on the Chirm-wards side of the City, and you could make a case for this being the Trading Gate (Widdershins Gate?)

So should we delete this entry, or make an amendment to the effect that this was "right" for the The Colour of Magic, but the gate has since been renamed, see here? AgProv (talk) 14:14, 9 December 2012 (PST)

I'd say re-write it to say that no gate of that name exists now; it may have been a local name for one of the city gates to widdershins. --Old Dickens (talk) 14:51, 9 December 2012 (PST)

It is also conceivable that the gate may no longer exist. I can think of several possible reasons for this: 1. Possibly destroyed in the fire in The Colour of Magic / any other of the city's fire/flood combinations, 2. The city has expanded past where the gate stood and thus it has been removed / forgotten, or is simply no longer considered important enough to be named, or 3. The gate has been dismantled. It is mentioned in on least one occasion (I forget where) that residents of the city frequently take the bricks that make up the wall so that they can use them for building materials, it is not inconceivable that over time the gate simply ceased to exist. --Zdm (talk) 22:04, 9 December 2012 (PST)

A Widdershins Road is indexed in the directory at the back of The Compleat Ankh-Morpork, as present in map square B5. But looking at the map, there seems top be no trace of this street, which is irritating. A fresh pair of eyes looking at the map might help? Ah well...AgProv (talk) 16:23, 10 December 2012 (PST)

I don't even see the directory listing. P.127 has Widdershins Broadway, no road. Do you have a collectible early copy with an error? --Old Dickens (talk) 17:10, 10 December 2012 (PST)

A fresh pair of eyes did help. I blame this on late night, small text and indifferent lighting: I conflated Widdershins Broadway with the entry just above it, Wickerweed Street, and came up with Widdershins Street. Then spent ten minutes squinting at B5 looking for a street that did not exist. Ah well. AgProv (talk) 05:48, 11 December 2012 (PST)

...an niver touched a drop, yeronner, 'sgods' truth! --Old Dickens (talk) 15:20, 11 December 2012 (PST)

Possible Resolution

On rereading The Colour of Magic I may have found what has happened to our mysterious gateway. The book reads, "The timbers of the Widdershin Gate were already on fire when Rincwind [...] reached them." and "They rode through just before the first of the big gate timbers descended in an explosion of sparks." From this we can tell that the gate was wooden but from other occasions we know that the city walls are some form of stone brick. This suggests that the gate may be a minor or temporary gate which may not have been rebuilt after the fire. --Zdm (talk) 18:01, 13 December 2012 (PST)