Hadrian's Wall

Hello, and welcome back to my blog! Since the two weeks I took off from blogging were the busiest I've had since I've been here, I have a backlog of pictures and topics to share. So, It's time to get busy!

As I've mentioned before, about five years ago, I spent three weeks at Oxford University taking a seminar on Roman Britain. This is when I became fascinated with Hadrian's Wall. I decided that if I ever had the opportunity, I wanted to not only see it, but spend some time hiking along it. My semester in London gave me that opportunity. Since Angela and I wanted to go to Scotland while she was here, we decided to stop on the way and spend a couple of days exploring Hadrian's Wall. I may be getting ahead of myself. Since some of you are unfamiliar with Hadrian's Wall, I'll begin with a brief history lesson. I promise the pictures will make up for it.

Hadrian was Roman Emperor from 117-138 AD. During the period that preceded his rule, the Empire reached its greatest extent. Despite many years of campaigning, however, what is now Scotland had never been conquered. Hadrian made the decision to abandon some of the latest additions to the empire and consolidate its frontiers. When he visited Britain in 122 AD, he commissioned the building of a wall to mark the frontier in what is now northern England. It is tempting to say, as one contemporary writer did, that the wall was built to "Separate the Romans and the Barbarians," but it's not that simple. (It never is.) Although there is evidence that this area was not entirely peaceful, Hadrian's Wall was not an impenetrable barrier, but one that allowed supervised movement. It seems that the primary reason for its construction was to give the legions something to do, to keep up morale and military discipline.

Our Hadrian's Wall visit focused on the stretch between Vindolanda and Birdoswald.

The wall is impressive. It was about ten feet wide and fifteen feet high.  Its 74 miles stretched from the mouth of the Tyne River in the east, to the Solway Firth in the west. Roughly every mile there was a fortified gateway, or milecastle, that could accommodate a dozen or more soldiers, and between each milecastle there were two watchtowers. Additionally, there were several major forts along the wall.

Hadrian's Wall lies in what are now the beautiful northern England counties of Northumberland and Cumbria. Our base for exploring the wall was the tiny Northumberland town of Bardon Mill. I knew we were on the right track when, as we were getting off the train, an English woman looked at me and said "You're getting off here? In the middle of nowhere?"

This is the Coach House Bed and Breakfast in Bardon Mill, where we stayed. 

Our first stop was Vindolanda, the site of a Roman Fort and village, there was also a fort there that predates the wall. You may recall that I mentioned Vindolanda in an earlier post. It is the site where hundreds of postcard-sized wooden writing tablets were found. (See my October 7 post for a picture and description of one of these tablets.) Such artifacts are extremely rare, making Vindolanda one of the most important Roman sites in existence.

This the headquarters building of the fort built in the 3rd-4th centuries.

An artist's rendering of what the site may have looked like in the 3rd century. This is a view of the village, with the fort in the background.

Angela made me promise to include some pictures of myself in this one. Here I am standing outside the fort's outer wall with beautiful Northumberland scenery in the background.

This is the spot where the writing tablets were found. They were preserved in anaerobic conditions, meaning the muck of wet clay kept out oxygen, which would have allowed them to decay. 

After a good night's sleep at the Coach House, we set out the next morning to visit the Roman forts of Housteads and Birdoswald, and the stretches of wall that lay near them.

This is one of my favorite pictures of Hadrian's Wall, looking east from Housteads. This view made me want to follow the wall to the North Sea.

Housteads is the best preserved fort on the wall. This is the fort's granary. The extra-thick walls required buttressing on the outside. The floor would have been on top of the many pillars, now visible. This allowed air to circulate and keep the grain dry.

Before looking at the next picture, see if you can guess what this was.

Did you get it right?

After visiting Housteads and hiking along the wall for a stretch, we hoped on the Hadrian's Wall Country Bus (which shut down for the season on the day after we visited) and went to the Roman Fort at Birdoswald, in Cumbria. Birdoswald is not nearly as impressive as Housteads or Vindolnda, but nearby is one of the best preserved stretches of Hadrians Wall.

A view of the beautiful Cumbrian countryside near Birdoswald. 

In this part of the wall, you can see that the facing blocks were cut, but the middle was rough stone.

Here I am along a great stretch of wall that is still almost six feet high. It was darn cold that day, and snowed a little bit that evening.

One more ride on the Hadrian's Wall bus took us back east to the Visitor's Center of Northumberland National Park, where we did a little more hiking along the wall and then had a great dinner at the Twice Brewed Inn.

That's the wall in the foreground. Can you make out the swan on the lake?

Milecastle number 37. Or was it 39?

My only regret of these two amazing days is that we did not get to this spot fifteen minutes earlier so we could have seen this sycamore tree next to the wall while the sun was still shining on it!

Warm fire, great food, great ale. A perfect end to the day.

I hope you enjoyed this installment of my blog. Next week I'll post about our trip to Scotland.

Cheers!