An Archaeological Guide to Walking Hadrian’s Wall from Bowness-on-Solway to Wallsend (West to East)

AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL GUIDE TO WALKING HADRIAN’S WALL

from Bowness-on-Solway to Wallsend (West to East)

M. C. Bishop

Per Lineam Valli 2

THE ARMATVRA PRESS

First published in 2012 in Great Britain by The Armatura Press

Smashwords Edition

© 2012 M. C. Bishop

All illustrations are © M. C. Bishop

Contents

Preface

Introduction

Preamble

Prima Pars (Part I): Milecastle 80 to Milecastle 60

Secunda Pars (Part II): Milecastle 59 to Milecastle 40

Tertia Pars (Part III): Milecastle 39 to Milecastle 20

Quarta Pars (Part IV): Milecastle 19 to Milecastle 0

Glossary

Bits to See

Endmatter

Preface

While I travel the long and dreary Wall, would have you travel with me, though by your own fire-side; would have you see, and feel, as I do; and make the journey influence your passions, as mine are influenced. William Hutton

After too many years writing-up other people’s excavations in the region of Hadrian’s Wall (first Corbridge, then Housesteads), I became self-employed in 1989 with the aid of a small incentive from the government known as the Enterprise Allowance. One of the first jobs I undertook – for the Archaeological Practice at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne (in the next room to where I had been employed) – was a distinctly odd one. I was given a sheaf of large-scale maps containing the proposed course for a footpath that would stretch from Wallsend to Bowness-on-Solway. My job was to devise and apply a scoring system for the threat such a path would pose to the monument. So, walking on a tarmac road next to, but not on any part of, the Wall, would be a very low threat; striding along the top of an earthwork like the Vallum, or perhaps crossing the Wall ditch, would pose a high level of threat. Little did I think that, twenty years after taking part in this curious desk-based task, I would regularly end up walking it. Such is life. And, yes, it does require some striding along earthworks and traversing of ditches. Some even consider that it requires getting ‘passports’ stamped at key points, but why that should be continues to elude me; was that the only way walkers could be persuaded to undertake this spectacular venture?

This book came about because I habitually walk the Wall west to east (although I have tried it the other way) and the existing guide books do not really cater for such a beast. Some of them are also – how may I put it – slightly less-than-perfectly informed about aspects of the archaeology of the Wall. This is an archaeological guide: look elsewhere for flora, fauna, geology, accommodation hints, and mythology (although it must be admitted that elements of each, particularly geology, do crop up from time to time, since the latter is so intimately related to the course of the Wall).

Why walk Hadrian’s Wall? Because it is arguably the best way to experience it. Over the years I have walked, cycled, driven, and flown it, but walking gives you by far the best appreciation of the way the Wall uses the topography. Why walk it from west to east? Try walking the Wall in bad weather and you will understand one of the most significant reasons: the prevailing winds in Britain are from the west, so they – and whatever precipitation they bring with them – will be at your back. It also starts gently and builds to a crescendo; walk east to west and you begin with the museum and fort at Wallsend and end with what looks for all the world like a garden shed at Bowness (and it is difficult to avoid the word ‘anticlimax’ in so doing). Moreover, the gentle walk along the coast at the beginning is a good warm-up for the main event. When the 78-year-old William Hutton set out (from Birmingham!) to walk the Wall, he did so first from west to east then, to make sure he had not missed anything, did it again from east to west. When he published a description of his little jaunt (a total of 601 miles, by the time he had made it back to Birmingham thirty-four days later), he chose to do so from east to west and this remains the favoured way to do it.1

The Hadrian’s Wall National Trail has made it much easier to access the course of the Wall but you should note that you are not obliged to stick to it where a right of way or public road can give you access to parts of the Wall avoided by the Trail² (most notoriously at the east end, where the last – first, if you walk the Wall the old-fashioned way – twelve Roman miles of Hadrian’s Wall are resolutely ignored by the Trail, which suddenly develops an unhealthy interest in the river Tyne for no good archaeological reason). Do not however go wandering across private land or wherever you are not wanted: rights of way are clearly marked on up-to-date Ordnance Survey 1:25,000 maps, as is Access Land, so use them. On the Trail, signage (an ugly word) is sometimes not as good going west to east as it is the other way, but you will cope.

This book is part of a unique experiment. It is one of a pair (PLV2 and PLV3), both covering the same ground, but from different directions. Most of what you find in this volume should be in the other, although in a different order (to paraphrase Eric Morecambe), so you should only need one of them to accompany your journey. That is not to say the content is identical, for that would be both dull for me to produce and, I suspect, would come across as slightly mechanical. Whilst the bare bones are the same, each book has been written separately around that framework. In both cases, the number of illustrations has been kept to a minimum, but this should hopefully be compensated for by the free illustrations ebook (PLV 4). A general introduction to the Wall, in the form of 100 questions and answers, can be found in PLV 1.

Special thanks are due to my alpha reader and road/path-tester, Duncan Campbell, who took his Kindle for a walk in June 2012 and put me right on some garbled directions and gently pointed out the inevitable typos as he did so. Thanks too to my beta readers, S.J.A. Turney, Lorna Richardson, and Gillian Orrell, who have armchair-tested this almost to destruction and provided invaluable feedback. I should definitely like to acknowledge Andante Travels Ltd who set me to walking the Wall in the first place and have provided unstinting support, enthusiasm, and support. Finally, Lorraine Marlow patiently tolerated living with the Wall and encouraged me when all seemed futile.

M. C. Bishop, Pewsey, June 2012

Introduction

Figure 1: Cross-section of the Wall

The first thing you need to know is a gross generalisation of the system: ditch, curtain wall, military way, Vallum, turrets, milecastles, and forts (Figure 1). The second thing you need to know is that this behemoth seldom conformed to that generalisation, but rather allowed variation from the norm to become the norm. This monument that is so often cited as the epitome of rigid planning is in fact cram packed full of exemplars of flexible thinking, adaptation, and the widespread deployment of initiative. You also need to know that every millimetre of Hadrian’s Wall is important, significant, and relevant to today, regardless of whether it has Scheduled Monument status (which it does) or is a World Heritage Site (which it is). If you for one minute doubt that, consider what in our present world has the influence to dictate the course of roads, property boundaries, and shop fronts or require footpaths, gift shops, museums, and what we might archly call facilities to attend it, whilst sucking in tens of thousands of visitors; all over a distance of just under 74 statute miles (Figure 2). Not even a charabanc full of vivaciously shallow reality TV stars can manage that.

Figure 2: The course of the Wall

Nevertheless, and notwithstanding, there is no facty chunk at the beginning of this little book telling you what the Wall was, is, or ought to have been. That will be introduced to you as we go along. To be honest, you don’t even need to move from your chair in order to enjoy your perambulation along this monumental vallation, but I hope it would at least inspire you to thinking about doing so.

Before we get too carried away by our enthusiasm, we do require a few words on terminology to avoid confusion. The following text will refer to the Wall, meaning the system as a whole, the wall or the curtain wall, meaning the stone barrier of Hadrian’s Wall itself, and the Turf Wall, meaning the turf rampart that preceded the Stone Wall to the west of MC49.3

So what should you take with you, apart from all the usual, dull, walking paraphernalia? Access to a copy of the latest edition of the Handbook to the Roman Wall (edited and handsomely updated by David Breeze) – the ultimate facty chunk – is advisable, but it is not designed as a guide book, rather a portable reference tome that should be referred to in the evenings, should you so desire. To make that task easier, each feature discussed here will have a brief Handbook reference for, say, a feature like Milecastle 48 (handily abbreviated, to save electrons, as) MC48 (Poltross Burn) [HB 285–7].

English Heritage’s Archaeological Map of Hadrian’s Wall is good (certainly better than recent Ordnance Survey efforts on that theme) and arguably essential for your journey, but perhaps still not quite matching the old Ordnance Survey editions of 1967 and 1972 for the clarity of their mapping. It has, for instance, made Wall Miles 73 to 75 vanish in a piece of tactical lunacy that would have raised eyebrows amongst even the least militarily able Roman aristocrats (and you need have little doubt that, as in most armies, there was an ample sufficiency of them). The occasional milecastle is omitted (anybody seen the measured location of MC61? It was there on the old Ordnance Survey maps and has recently been confirmed by geophysical survey). Clearly, somebody within the otherwise august body that is English Heritage forgot that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Tsk.

The English Heritage map includes the route of the Trail, but you might also like to take a specialist walkers’ map like the Harvey XT40 Hadrian’s Wall Path ‘tough polyethylene’ one (if you sniff it, you can almost, but not quite, detect Kendal mint cake). To be honest, since the Ordnance Survey 1:25,000 base mapping is rendered ambiguous by being greyed out on the English Heritage map, you also ought to have the four OS Explorer maps (314 Solway Firth; 315 Carlisle; OL43 Hadrian’s Wall; and 316 Newcastle upon Tyne) that cover the Wall as well. Phew, that’s a lot of maps to drag with you!

If you have a smartphone with GPS and Google Earth or Google Maps, then the Per Lineam Valli file (which can be obtained from http://tinyurl.com/wallatlas) might prove useful for checking your precise position in relation to the (often invisible) Wall. Otherwise, a GPS unit can come in handy for recording your track (and any subsequent boasting of your accomplishments to astounded friends and relatives) and, if you are sufficiently well-heeled, the more sophisticated machines can take advantage of the Garmin Discoverer map series which includes the Hadrian’s Wall National Trail at 1:25,000 (with smaller-scale coverage of the region, should you need to stray). That being said, it only contains the OS base mapping coverage and not the archaeological information that is on the English Heritage map (and you could buy fifteen copies of that for the price of the digital one), so the savvy may prefer a basic GPS unit and the batteryless EH map.

Preamble

Head for the pretty little village of Bowness-on-Solway. You will probably need to do this by bus (a 93 from Carlisle bus station), although William Hutton was quite content to walk there from Birmingham. If walking the Wall in pairs, you can try the Two Car Trick (not to be confused with the famed Shakespearian Bed Trick). Drive two cars to the terminal point of your day’s walking, leave one there, drive back to the start, leave the other there, then walk. At the end of the day, get in the car you (hopefully) rediscover at your destination, go back to the first, then retire for a night’s rest. Not very green, and problematical in the Central Sector, where parking is (deliberately) scarce, but one way round the gaping inadequacies of the British public transport system.

So, how best to organise this linear exploration? Well we could do a lot worse than let the Roman army do it for us. The late Roman writer Vegetius, using earlier writers on the Roman army, reported that the standard military pace was 20 Roman miles per day. That would divide the Wall up neatly into four sections, so that seems as good a system as any. Milecastles 60 and 40 certainly make good punctuation points in terms of finding accommodation or car parks, Milecastle 20 less so but it will do for our purposes. Twenty Roman miles (18.4 statute miles or 29.6km) is not unreasonable for a day’s walking. I know a man who claims (and I see no reason to disbelieve him) to have walked the entire Wall in 48 hours, although I can’t quite see the point in it myself.

Prima Pars (Part I): Milecastle 80 to Milecastle 60

Wall Mile 80 [HB 371]

Figure 3: Altar above blocked door in farm building wall at Bowness

Head for the bus turning area and small car park at the west end of the village of Bowness. From here you can survey the vast estuary that is the Solway Firth. To the west are the remains of the bridge that used to carry the Solway Junction Railway across the water to Scotland (and, before it was dismantled, the occasional drunken reveller – seeking to bypass national drinking laws – to their watery doom). According to Bishop Nicholson, writing in 1707, the terminus of the Wall lay a quarter of a mile west of the village and other writers confirm his observation. To the north, across the estuary, lies what is now Scotland but was in Roman times Caledonia (please note: no Picts were harmed in the making of this mural barrier, they were almost certainly not around until long after it was constructed; the Picts’ Wall was a local term that came to be used to describe the Wall in the post-Roman period). To the east is the low drumlinoid that provides the slightly elevated platform for the fort of Bowness-on-Solway. This is as good a place as any to contemplate how the emperor Hadrian’s visit to Britain in AD 122 (a date you will find hard to forget, as it is now the number of the Hadrian’s Wall bus, although that no longer ventures as far as Bowness, sadly) led to the construction of this massive monument, unique in form in the Roman world. Why did he do it? In the Historia Augusta, his biographer offers a simple explanation: ‘he was the first to construct a wall, eighty miles in length, which was to separate the barbarians from the Romans’ (HA Hadrian, 11).

Now proceed east up the road and into the village as far as the King’s Arms pub at the T-junction.

Bowness-on-Solway fort (MAIA) [HB 367–70]

Figure 4: Plan of the fort at Bowness-on-Solway

The fort of Maia lies beneath the village of Bowness. The significance of its location, apart from the conveniently raised ground of the drumlinoid, is that it is (or was) the lowest fording point of the Solway Firth. As William Camden observed, ‘at every ebbe the water is so low that the borderers and beast-stealers may easily wade over.’ The remains of the fort were evident when Camden visited in 1599 (‘tracts of streetes, ruinous walles, and an haven now stopped up with mud’), but there is now nothing to be seen of its fabric. A noticeboard on the side of the King’s Arms