What Is Hadrian's Wall?

PHOTOS FROM A WANDERING ARCHAEOLOGIST

As a “wandering archaeologist," I’ve been sharing my photos of ruins from around the world, but Hadrian’s Wall is particularly close to my heart. I live nearby and my speciality is Roman frontier archaeology. My business is giving tours of the Wall and its forts. My Master’s Thesis was about Wall communities. I’ve served as a tutor for an on-line Wall course, and even been an occasional tour guide for students and tourists. I love “Wall Country” and thought I would share some of my favorite photos, and a few facts, with you. (ALL PHOTOS ARE MY OWN)

MILECASTLE 39 (CASTLE NICK) -- The Emperor Hadrian visited Britain in the summer of A.D. 122, and it is generally believed that construction of his famous Wall began that year. The Wall runs for 80 Roman miles (117km) across what is now Northern England, from the Solway Firth to the (aptly named) Newcastle suburb of Wallsend (on the River Tyne, near the North Sea). Built into the Wall, at regular intervals of one mile, are small fortlets known as milecastles. Each Roman mile was then subdivided by two evenly spaced towers. Sixteen forts, manned by auxiliary soldiers, were later added to the design, spaced roughly half a day’s march apart.

WALLTOWN CRAGS -- Hadrian’s Wall is very different from other “linear barriers” that the Romans constructed in Germany and North Africa. To start with, it is massively over-engineered, even monumental. It resembles a Greek city wall more than the simple wooden palisade built in Germany. The extreme regularity of its design (even putting milecastle gates at the top of cliffs, and elsewhere ignoring the best terrain) has led to the suggestion it was designed on paper by Hadrian himself and only later were slight adjustments allowed to be made.

TOWER 41A (CAW GAP) -- Hadrian’s monumental frontier didn’t last long though. The next Emperor, Antoninus Pius, immediately set about conquering more territory and built his own wall of turf and timber across Scotland, in the area of modern Edinburgh and Glasgow. This new wall, though less impressive to look at, learned from many of the mistakes made a generation earlier. Hadrian got the last laugh though. By the 160s, Scotland was abandoned and Hadrian’s Wall went back into use for another 250 years!

STAIRS AT MILECASTLE 48 (POLTROSS BURN) -- So what did Hadrian’s Wall look like? We don’t really know. Our best guess is that it was 15 feet tall (4.5m). That estimate is partly based on the angle of the (otherwise not very exciting looking) stairs shown here. Was there a wall walk for guards on patrol? Were there crenellations for them to shelter behind? Did the towers have angled roofs or open tops? We just don’t know. However, there is some evidence that the whole thing was painted white.

GRANARY AT HOUSESTEADS FORT -- No two forts have exactly the same ground plan, but they share common features. They are usually rectangular with rounded corners, like a “playing card”. The most important building was the Principia, a suite of administrative rooms set around a central courtyard. The commander’s residence, the Praetorium, was also usually a Mediterranean courtyard house (totally out of step with the northern British climate). Most forts featured a bath house, complete with underfloor heating, and some had a field hospital. Granaries were built with heavily buttressed external walls and raised floors to keep food from rotting. The soldiers lived in blocks of barracks, of course. Cavalry units kept their horses in stables adjacent to their own rooms.

EXCAVATING TEMPLES OUTSIDE MARYPORT FORT, CUMBRIAN COAST -- Life wasn’t just soldiers standing guard over windswept moors and misty fens. Wherever soldiers built forts, towns grew up outside their gates. Here were houses and taverns, temples and shops. Traders came from around the world (we have the tombstone of a freed British slave, dedicated by her Syrian husband) and there were major towns at Corbridge and Carlisle. Soldiers weren’t allowed to marry, but kept slaves and unofficial wives. Finds of small shoes indicate the presence of women and children, even inside the walls of the forts.

UNINSCRIBED ALTAR AT HALTON CHESTERS FORT -- Roman religion didn’t resemble what we would recognize today; sacrifices were made to a god in direct exchange for that god’s help. It was polytheistic, of course, with many gods to choose from depending on what was needed. It wasn’t just the famous Venus and Mars either. Wall soldiers incorporated otherwise unknown local gods, like Antenociticus and Coventina, as well as eastern “mystery cults” to Mithras and Jupiter-Dolichenus. All things change, however, and we shouldn’t forget that for nearly 100 years, the Wall defended a Christian Empire.

LOOKING WEST ALONG THE WHIN SILL -- How did things end? By the 5th century, civil wars in Europe had severely depleted the Wall garrisons (already recruited locally for generations). In 410, the Roman Emperor told Britain to defend itself, meaning pay and supplies would no longer be arriving. There was no Afghanistan style “pull-out” though. These soldiers had never seen Rome and wouldn’t be going “back”. The fort was their home and it seems they stayed put, transforming into local “warbands”. At Birdoswald (and seemingly elsewhere), the courtyard Principia was abandoned and the solid foundations of the granary were rebuilt as a medieval-style wooden Great Hall. [enter King Arthur, stage left]

NEWCASTLE KEEP -- Times move on, but we always build upon our past, literally and figuratively. In 1080, when the Normans needed a “new” castle to consolidate their conquests in the north, they built it directly on top of the ruins of the old one. That was the Roman fort of Pons Aelius (English: Hadrian’s Bridge). The Victorians, all for modern progress, drove their railway track straight though the (now old) castle’s bailey yard, narrowly missing the surviving Keep. But, if you know where to look, you can still find bits of the Roman masonry poking out under the railway arches.

I hope you've enjoyed this whirlwind introduction. If you'd like to hear more (a lot more) send me a message on Hadrian Walking Tours and we can organize a walk. It'll be fun. See you on the Wall, traveller!