Hadrian’s Wall

21 May

Today’s destination is a wall built over 2000 years ago that’s still, more or less, standing today

It’s slowly giving up its secrets and providing a sneak peek into what Roman occupied Britain looked like.

Why build a wall and who was Hadrian?

Built by the Romans, Hadrian’s Wall is still seen as one of the most important monuments in Britain. Known for its use as a frontier for the Roman Empire, Hadrian’s Wall today is recognised and celebrated internationally as a World Heritage Site that we’re still learning from.

When he became Roman Emperor in 117 AD after the death of his adoptive father, Trajan, Romans were very into adoption but we won’t get into that right now, Hadrian was all about reinforcing the current borders of his vast empire. So when he travelled to Britain in 122 AD, he ordered the construction of a Wall.

About the time Hadrian came into the top job, the Roman Empire had been on a bit of an expansion streak for the last couple hundred years. And so, I’m sure you can imagine, the Romans were generally struggling with all the rebellions cropping up throughout the vast reaches of their empire. There really are only so many places you can be at once. So Hadrian thought why not put a bit of a pause on the expansion plans and sort out reinforcing the current borders, and getting some stability in place. And the idea of Hadrian’s Wall was apart of this shoring up.

There is only one known ancient source that explains Hadrian’s reasons for setting up a wall, and they come from Hadrian’s biographer who writes:

Hadrian was the first to build a wall, 80 [Roman] miles long, to separate the Romans from the barbarians.

Something that’s often quite misunderstood about Hadrian’s Wall is that it isn’t, nor has it ever marked the border between England and Scotland. In fact, Hadrian’s Wall was around even before England and Scotland were tracts of land with borders. The Wall was merely a frontier, so that the Romans could keep the pesky waring barbarians out from Roman controlled lands.

But who were these ‘barbarians’ that Hadrian was so concerned about? When the Romans arrived in Ancient Britain around the 1st century AD, they found various tribes going about their lives, each within their own part of the island. When the Romans came in declaring the island of Britain for themselves, some of these tribes weren’t best pleased with this change of events and so did not surrender happily, creating hostility towards the Romans throughout their 400 year occupation.

The main tribes who were seriously Roman opposed were the Pictish tribes of modern-day Scotland, who were of course, known for their warlike spirit. These tribes, clearly of Celtic origin, controlled pretty much everything north of the Wall. And thanks to their skills in battle, the Romans were never able to defeat them entirely, so they had to make do with handling the uprisings as they came.

So what else was there for the Romans to do, but build Hadrian’s Wall with the idea of aiding them in fighting off the barbaric tribes of the North. Although initially the Wall was also used a base from which the Romans could launch expeditions into what we now call Scotland, over time, it became more of a border where the Roman’s could monitor who came and went and the trade that was going on between those south of the wall with those north of the wall. And being the industrial Romans they are, they also may have used the wall as a point of taxation.

Before the Wall, the Romans only really had a couple of fortifications built at strategic locations linked by a road, which today is known as Stanegate. So it was really the construction of the Wall that helping create a frontier and a good defence against the raiding tribes. But what the Wall’s legacy has become, is more of a lasting monument to Hadrian, who was an Emperor who valued peace and stability more than military expansion.

Constructing a wall

The building of the Wall itself, we know, started with Hadrian’s visit in 122 AD, and it took a good six years for the initial construction to be finished, then of course there were changes and expansions made later on.

The Wall the Romans built was 80 Roman miles long, Roman miles are a bit different to modern miles, a Roman mile is about 1481 metres, so that would make the wall about 117 km long, stretching from Wallsend (how fitting) in the east to Bowness in the west. It’s thought that different parts of the Wall had different heights, but estimates are around 5 metres tall, now that’s a proper wall.

We know that it was the Roman army that got to work and built the Wall, mainly thanks to the inscriptions that they left behind. What archaeologists and historians have worked out, is that three legions of troops, belonging to the 2nd, 6th and 20th legions, each consisting of 5000 infantrymen, were put to work in building the main wall.

And the construction of the Wall was not an easy feat. The original plan was for a stone wall about 10 Roman feet wide, and 12 Roman feet high. We know that a Roman foot is slightly larger than a standard modern foot, so probably higher than we would expect today.

But this stone section of the Wall was only for the eastern half, the western half was to be made of turf, so a turf rampart and expected to be 20 Roman feet wide. So quite a bit bigger than the stone half, probably because turf is a bit harder to stack than square stones.

In front of the whole wall would be a ditch, except for the places where rivers or crags already had made a ditch. And those who study the Wall believe that at every 1/3 of a Roman mile, which would be about 494 metres, there would be a tower and then at every Roman mile would be a fortlet which would include a gate in the wall, so traffic could come and go, no doubt observed closely by the Roman’s stationed at said fort.

Now things changed a little about halfway through the building of the Wall. Forts were built a bit further apart than the standard Roman mile, the stone wall was narrowed to about 8 Roman feet, rather than 10, and a second ditch, often called the vallum, was dug behind the wall, on the Roman side.

Technically there were two planning schemes of Hadrian’s Wall. The first was for a stone wall east of the River Irthing, and a turf rampart to the west, showing the Romans did use geographical features to their advantage, fortlets were to be built at every Roman mile, with two towers in between each fortlet, most things were to be made of stone and all together looking pretty good.

But then, before the first half of the first plan could even be finished, things changed and we welcome in the second building scheme. Which saw a change to how forts were incorporated in the wall itself, which meant that sections of the wall needed to be demolished so the new style of fort could sit astride the Wall, because these were so much more work there were less of them, placed a whole lot further apart than 1 Roman mile. It’s also at this time that we see the inclusion of the Vallum. Behind a good section of the Wall was a good sized ditch, which pretty much made crossing to the other side of the wall all but impossible except for at a fort with a gate. Not to mention that the overall workmanship quality of the wall really started going downhill, almost like pride wasn’t being taken in the work anymore. So quite the shift to see in the middle of a large construction project.

Then it wasn’t until the late 2nd or even the early 3rd century that there are some major changes made to the wall. One big one being that the gates placed into the Wall were significantly narrowed so that only pedestrian traffic could fit through, which probably aided the Roman’s in keeping a good old eye on who was coming and going. There were of course many modifications made to barrack blocks, commanders’ houses, and other buildings. Some forts even had open spaces cleared… for picnics I imagine.

But the construction of Hadrian’s Wall really did make a large impact on the landscape and to the people living in and around it.

A complete wall

All this talk of building a Wall sounds really familiar for some reason, but I can’t quite put my finger on it…

Anyway, so once the Wall was actually complete it represented what was pretty much the best of Roman engineering and infrastructure. Its massive size made the Wall seem permanent and with the military living and working at the Wall, it served as a constant reminder to the locals that they lived under Roman law. And we know, thanks to Hadrian, that almost all of the Roman Empire’s success was down to stabilising the local populations so that they would happily live under Roman rule. Uprisings and revolts are how Empire’s lose land. And it is probably, arguably, the presence of Hadrian’s Wall that potentially contributed to the Roman’s success in Britain, and their continued occupation, which lasted for a good 400 years.

While Hadrian’s Wall never fell to any attack from the northern tribes, it was at one point passed over for a newer model. A bit further north from Hadrian’s Wall is the Antonine Wall, made of earth and slightly smaller than Hadrian’s construction project, stretching from the Firth of Forth to the Clyde. When Hadrian died, Antonius Pius succeeded him and decided that he wanted to get back into the habit of extending the empire, and why not head up into Scotland? So he abandoned his predecessor’s pride and joy and made his own wall completely out of turf and stretching for 59 km.

Historians to this day like to debate about the point of the Antonine Wall, when Hadrian’s Wall still seemed within perfect working order, and I suppose it’s one of those many ancient things that we’ll just never know. But what we do know is that less than 20 years after being in use, the Antonine Wall was itself abandoned, bringing Hadrian’s Wall once again back in favour, and that’s how it stayed until the Roman’s left Britain.

So a little side track there and a bit of a mystery about the reasons behind wall usage. But let’s crack on with what Hadrian’s Wall did once it was built.

We’ve briefly touched on this, but Hadrian’s Wall was more than just a line of defence, and maybe this is a clue as to why it was favoured over the Antonine Wall. The one built by Hadrian, we know, had gates built into the wall and so naturally became a pretty major checkpoint and possibly customs post. Which I think we can safely say the Romans took advantage of in the charging of tolls.

We can figure out, especially with the narrowing of the gates, that the wall was used as a way to control movement into and out of the Roman controlled part of Britain, and when you control people moving around you also control trade.

But while keeping a tight lid on the local population, the job security of the Wall would have brought thousands of Roman soldiers to Britain, for the building of the thing of course, but also for the continued manning of the Wall. You can’t have people just walking around all willy nilly.

But something that can be seen in the archaeological record is the mark these Roman soldiers made on the local culture and people of Britain. There would have been marriages, babies, families, homes. All of it. These Roman soldiers living and working at Hadrian’s Wall would have made a life for themselves. And it’s easy to see in what they left behind. In fact excavations carried out on the Roman side of the Wall, tell us of the existence of civil settlements around the 3rd century, and through geophysical surveys they can see proper urban sprawl around and well beyond the established forts on the Wall.

While the men who manned the Wall were part of the Roman army, they weren’t necessarily from Rome. Each regiment at the wall would either have been made up of 500 or 1000 infantrymen, and each fort is thought to house a single unit. Most of these men would have been recruited from the continent, meaning they had come from as far away as Africa and Asia. While the others would have been from throughout modern-day Europe and of course Britain.

And again it is through archaeological work that we know the Romans had a pretty good life. By keeping the peace for 400 years, they wouldn’t have been fighting, they would have been enjoying the simpler things about living in the middle of Britain.

And then, fairly abruptly, around 400 AD, the Romans packed up and they all went home. We know that at some sites, like that at Birdoswald Roman Fort, the locals took it over for about the next 100 years, though these people were probably the descendants of the original soldiers who worked at the Fort. And that does make sense with the rich discoveries that’s been found at Birdoswald. It’s actually one of the best preserved forts along the Wall, and it’s remains have revealed more about Hadrian’s Wall and the people who lived there than any other fort.

But all this to say that the wall did its job, especially with a large majority of it still up and around today, maybe not still doing its job as a wall, but definitely doing its job as a reminder that a Wall was once here.

What remains of the wall

If you find yourself walking along what remains of Hadrian’s Wall today, you’ll see that only about 10% of the original wall is still visible. And I think it’s not surprising that the whole thing didn’t survive the last 2000 years.

After the Roman Empire started to decline, and the Romans left Britain, Hadrian’s Wall was largely abandoned. Whole parts of it became derelict and the locals started using the Wall as a quarry to build churches, farms and houses.

Although by the 16th century, the Wall appears to have been in pretty decent nick. Some even proposed that they rebuild the Wall thanks to ongoing tensions with Scotland, but the use of the Wall as a quarry seems to have continued. It wasn’t until the 18th and 19th centuries, when conservation for Hadrian’s Wall become front of mind that the Wall was once again left alone. And by the time we get to the mid-19thcentury, there was a definite drive to preserve the wall and Victorian archaeologists and historians were only too happy to use the wall to understand more about the Roman occupation of Britain.

Even though whole portions of the wall were demolished to make way for roads, there was still plenty left to study for those early archaeologists and historians who chose to study Hadrian’s Wall, like John Clayton, John Hodgson and John Collingwood Bruce. Perhaps it was a prerequisite to be named John if you wanted to study the Wall. Regardless, John3 were passionate about protecting what remained of the wall and it’s probably because of these early archaeologists and historians that we still have a good chunk of Hadrian’s Wall to see for ourselves.

There is so much to learn about Hadrian’s Wall and the people who lived and worked at the Wall, that the knowledge sharing and discovering isn’t even close to being over. Every year whole teams of archaeologists, historians and volunteers unearth new finds and add new details to our understanding of the Roman Era.

And the amount of data that there is still to unearth is pretty massive, it’s been estimated that not even 5% of what’s left of Hadrian’s Wall has been archaeologically examined.

John Clayton made a name for himself when he started funding excavations on his land, which just so happened to contain Chesters Fort in the 1840s. But the, what we would call, modern scientific excavations didn’t begin until the 1890s.

And in 1895, it was Francis Haverfield who discovered the Turf Wall that predated the stone wall at Bridoswald Fort. Quite the find for the era, and it certainly helped to cement our modern understanding of the construction of Hadrian’s Wall.

More recently though there have been equally important discoveries made.

In 1973, writing tablets were found at Vindolanda, providing an insight into life at the Wall. And it was in the late 1980s, that archaeologists from English Heritage found evidence for the first time that people continued to inhabit the fort at Birdoswald after the Roman’s had departed.

As we head into the late 20th and early 21st centuries, archaeologists discovered more and more about those who thrived at Birdoswald. The geophysical surveys we spoke about earlier, scanned beneath the ground and found that the Birdoswald Fort didn’t just contain military, but had a thriving community as evidenced by the two large settlements found to be sitting on either side of the main road. And this was only supported when the cremation burial site nearby was excavated in 2009. In analysing the remains, archaeologists found not just men, but women and children as well, not to mention the wealth of knowledge that the urns and grave goods provided.

While excavation is ongoing at several sections of Hadrian’s Wall, I think it will be quite a while before we have the whole picture. So of course there is currently no published survey of Hadrian’s Wall, but perhaps that’s something to look forward to in the future?

There is so much work being carried out on Hadrian’s Wall at any given time and so much to uncover and learn about that if you ever want to learn more about the excavations happening on the Wall, or even to volunteer your time, then the Hadrian’s Wall Community Archaeology Project is for you. Their website is full of fascinating site reports and info on their current excavations and digs.

Visiting the wall

You might think that visiting Hadrian’s Wall would be a bit boring, especially since it’s effectively a ruin. But there’s actually heaps to see and even do along the Wall, you just have to know the good spots to go to.

There are forts, museums and events that bring the Wall the life, not to mention the spectacular, and free, walk you can take right along side the Wall.

Now there is just so much that has been found at Hadrian’s Wall, that I couldn’t possibly go through it all here. So a good spot to see what’s been found is the Roman Frontier Gallery at Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery. They’ve got an exhibition with displays telling the story of the 400 year occupation by the Romans at Birdoswald and many of the other forts. So I definitely suggest you check them out if you find yourself in the Carlisle area.

There is a group of very dedicated local volunteers who are essential in looking after Hadrian’s Wall and making sure it survives for future generations. They’re all trained by professional archaeologists, and it’s their job to make regular inspections of the Wall, recording any changes in the Wall’s condition. It’s this important work that allows the archaeologists to take action if there is any damage to the Wall.

If you happen to find yourself at the Vindolanda site near Hexham, you might even get the opportunity to get nice and up close to an excavation area, and chat with some archaeologists and volunteers carrying out work there, you may even witness a discovery being made. It’s all a possibility.

As you can imagine, winter is a particularly perilous time for what is quite a fragile environment. So in 1987, Hadrian’s Wall became a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and in 2005 it became part of the Transnational Frontiers of the Roman Empire World Heritage Site, now that’s a mouth full, which also includes the German Limes.

If you’re interested in walking along Hadrian’s Wall, then the Hadrian’s Wall Path National Trail is probably for you. Stretching for 135km, it follows the length of the wall from one coast to the other. As you walk you’ll pass through some of the most beautiful parts of England, and no doubt have the opportunity to stop in at several wonderful museums along the way.

If fitness level is a concern for you, it’s reported that anyone who is reasonably fit, whatever that means, should be comfortable walking the Hadrian’s Wall Path, and from personal experience the route is easy, but it’s not like walking down a flat paved road easy, there are hills to go up and over.

The route itself is easy enough to find, it’s clearly marked, and there are of course two directions you can go. You can either go in the direction the wall was built, so east to west, or you can walk it backwards, from west to east, which supposedly is preferred for better weather conditions.

Because the path is not paved, it is literally a dirt path along a wall ruin, it can get quite muddy when it’s wet, so the recommendation is to walk between May and October, which coincidentally is when the Path is the most popular, thanks to it being the summer months.

Now, if cycling is more your thing, then the Hadrian’s Cycle Way may be more your speed. Opening in 2006, there is a range of terrains you’ll encounter, from strenuous hills to picturesque country lanes. Although the Cycle Way is a little different to the Wall Path as it winds its way through Northern England for 280 km.

2022 saw some pretty big celebrations for Hadrian’s Wall, being its 1900th anniversary of the start of its construction. And did English Heritage lean into it. They commemorated the anniversary with a year long festival. Sadly it seems we just missed it, but that doesn’t mean we have to miss out on all the fun.

You can still visit any part of what remains of Hadrian’s Wall, it’s all open to the public and can be admired on foot by anyone wishing to have a look. You can even see some of the fascinating excavated forts.

Although I am told that the best parts to see the Wall in all its glory is at Birdoswald, Willowford, Cawfields, Wallton Crags and Housesteads to name just a few.

Birdoswald is one that is particularly impressive. The photos I’ve seen show quite a picturesque site with the wall overlooking the River Irthing. It’s also along this section of the wall that you can still see a Roman Fort, turret and milecastle.

So come on go put your shoes on that you use for walking, because there’s heaps to see. Although there are some general rules and advice to follow when visiting Hadrian’s Wall.

Firstly make sure to always keep to the signed path, make sure you walk beside the wall and not on top of it, it is after all an archaeological remnant. Because the public can go and see any part of the wall at any time, it is best to keep in mind that the Wall does sit in the middle of fields and paddocks owned by people, so just remember to always close the gate if there is one and respect the livestock.

Of course going to one of the organised sites that I briefly mentioned above will have more things to look at and do, and maybe even a café or two. So perhaps if the day you arrive at Hadrian’s Wall is a wet day, which let’s be honest most of them are in Britain, then perhaps head to one of these spots to avoid walking in the fragile landscape while the ground is very wet. You’ll probably have just as good an experience.