Built of Kentish ragstone around 1379, it is the last survivor of Canterbury's seven medieval gates, still well-preserved and one of the city's most distinctive landmarks.

This scheduled monument and Grade I listed building houses the West Gate Towers Museum as well as a series of historically themed escape rooms.

[1][2][3] It has been suggested that it was built primarily as an entrance for pilgrims visiting the shrine of St Thomas Becket at the cathedral.

[9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18] Lambie died in 2012, having invested £1 million in the project, causing the closure of the museum and generating fresh questions about the building's future.

In 2014, the council agreed to assign the lease to the One Pound Lane company, who stated that they intended to reopen the existing museum and develop a restaurant and bar in the premises.

[1][2][3][5] The gateway is protected under UK law as a Grade I listed building, and a trial to ban road traffic from passing through the gate was undertaken in 2012.

It has battered plinths to the drum towers, battlements, machicolations and eighteen gunloops: a high number for a gateway, and among the earliest gunholes in Britain.

In 1793−1794 the hall over the gate was split into three and the present square lantern added to the roof, along with the wooden doors and cell linings which are visible today; the cost was £400.

[5] These are 17 six-foot, painted, plaster-cast maquettes for the sixteen bronze barons and two bishops which today stand in the Lords Chamber at Westminster Palace, cast in 1847−1851.

[25] The sculptors of the maquettes are as follows: John Thomas who made the maquette of Stephen Langton,[nb 3] as of 2013 in Canterbury Heritage Museum and as of 2021 in The Beaney; Patrick MacDowell; Henry Timbrell; James Sherwood Westmacott; J. Thorneycroft (possibly Thomas Thornycroft); Frederick Thrupp; Alexander Handyside Ritchie; and William Frederick Woodington.

As of 2021, three of the maquettes (Stephen Langton, Thomas Robert Fitzwalter by Frederick Thrupp and Sieur de Quincy by James Westmacott) have been restored and are displayed in The Beaney, Canterbury.