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

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 Ancient 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 also omitted, but such matters are not deal-breakers; having no map is.

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.

Prestumble

If you are actually considering walking the Wall, there are many good reasons for doing it from west to east. It is far, far better than going east to west. You’ll find my blog for that walk online for all to read for free, or you can get the ebook (PLV 2) for a modest consideration. However, if you are determined to walk it east to west, then digitally is the best way (at least the wind and rain in your face will be virtual).

Our journey begins next to the remains of the former Swan Hunter shipyard, where the Wall apparently once ran into the river. Once, by all accounts, Geordie kids paddled and splashed around its remains, but that time has long gone. For us, Wallsend is the start of what we shall boldly term our Echtmauerwanderung along Hadrian’s Wall: a stroll per lineam valli (literally ‘along the line of the Wall’). This has one distinct virtue: the Wall is only 118.4km (73.5 miles) long, whereas the National Trail is 137.0km (85.1 miles), so we don’t have to walk so far but get to see more Wall!

Anyway, without more ado, let’s start at the very beginning. If you require more detail, feature headings include references to the appropriate page in the latest edition of Collingwood Bruce’s Handbook to the Roman Wall (and the map includes clickable links to other resources drawn from English Heritage’s PastScape website, DeFRA’s MAGIC mapping base, and – occasionally – from romanbritain.org).

Prima Pars (Part I): Milecastle 0 to Milecastle 19

Milecastle 0 [Not mentioned in the HB]

Although it has been suggested that the curtain wall may have begun with a riverside milecastle, there is as yet no evidence to support this notion, but redevelopment of the former shipyard may ultimately provide clarification on this point.

Wall Mile 0 [HB 371]

The Branch Wall

Figure 3: The reinstated Branch Wall

Before entering the fort and museum of Segedunum, head east along the main road for a few yards, then immediately right, and make your way up onto the bridge that takes the cycle path round the back of the fort. Heading west, you will soon see your first piece of Hadrian’s Wall. This bit is known as the Branch Wall and it is this that ran down into the Tyne. This bit has actually been moved a couple of times (it was found further to the south when the slipway for the RMS Mauretania was being built in 1903, moved to a nearby park, then back again when Segedunum was opened) but it is not the most mobile piece of the Wall. That distinction belongs to a fragment of the Branch Wall that was in a display case on the RMS Carpathia (which was fitting out at Wallsend at the time of its discovery) and appears to have been present when that ship went to the aid of the Titanic. It may even have been the only piece of Hadrian’s Wall to have been sunk by a U-boat in 1918! There is a model of the Carpathia upstairs in the industrial section of the museum, but no model of the U-boat.

Wallsend fort (SEGEDVNVM) [HB 131–8]

Figure 4: Plan of Wallsend fort

Wallsend is very far from the best-preserved fort along the line of the Wall; we shall see better examples of virtually all of its features. However, it is the only one that lays all of them out for our appreciation, and even offers a convenient tower from which to view them. The order in which we proceed around Segedunum (the name, which is Latinised Celtic, means something like ‘strong fort’) is a matter of taste, but for our purposes we shall visit the site first and then look at the museum.

It used to be though that Wallsend fort was built when the Wall was extended eastwards from an original terminus in Newcastle during the Hadrianic period, after the initial construction phase was well under way. This notion no longer has currency and it is now believed that Hadrian’s Wall was always intended to reach Wallsend. Occupying 1.6ha (4.1 acres), it was only some 6.4km (4 miles) from the next fort at Newcastle. The garrison was cohors II Nerviorum in the 2nd century and cohors IV Lingonum in the 3rd and 4th centuries and both of these were auxiliary units that contained a mixture of infantry and cavalry (in other words, a cohors equitata). On Hadrian’s Wall, the legions did most (but not all) of the building and the auxiliaries most of the garrisoning (but, again, apparently not all).

Before the campaign of excavations in the 1970s, the fort site was covered by housing and just its outline was marked out in the streets, so if you think the remains are rather scrappy, bear that little fact in mind. Now a large portion of the fort has been cleared for display and only the portion under Buddle Street remains largely unexcavated. ‘Largely’, because the great Wall scholar F. G. Simpson tunnelled under that road to check whether the junction of the curtain wall and the fort proved them to be of one build: they were. There are fine views of the fort and the surrounding shipyards to be had from the viewing tower that is part of the recent site museum.

The Defences

Figure 5: Wallsend east gate

The fort was surrounded by a stone wall backed by an earthen rampart and, like all forts of its kind, it had rounded corners. In each of those corners was a corner- or angle-tower, whilst gate towers flanked each twin-portalled entrance (centrally in the north and south sides, and just north of the curtain wall on the western side). An eastern gate matched the western, but an additional (single-portalled) western gate was placed between the curtain wall and the south-west corner, probably to facilitate access to the civil settlement or vicus. Wallsend is unique in this asymmetric arrangement of its gates, a product of its location in an angle in the course of the Wall. Additional towers were placed between each gate tower and its neighbouring corner tower and – by analogy with other, better-preserved forts – the whole thing was probably finished off by a walkway shielded by a crenelated parapet. The fort defences were further enhanced by a ditch which continued the line of the ditch of Hadrian’s Wall itself.

The HQ building

Figure 6: CO’s house (in the foreground), HQ (with forehall) and (in the distance) granaries

The best place to start our tour of the internal buildings is with the administrative centre, the headquarters building (principia). It lies at the junction of the two principal streets of the fort, the east-to-west via principalis and the north-to-south via praetoria. Unusually for a Hadrian’s Wall fort, this junction was covered by a forehall, a feature found in many continental forts and possibly used for training under cover. South of that lie the standard features of an HQ building: a courtyard, then a cross-hall (the origin of the basilical form later adopted for churches), and then a rear range of offices, the central chamber of which was the chapel of the standards (aedes signorum), under which was a strong room in which the unit’s savings were kept.

The CO’s house

To the east of the principia was the commanding officer’s house (praetorium), where he (and his family, including slaves) lived, comfortably separated from his soldiers. This was a ‘Mediterranean-style’, inward-looking courtyard structure, with four ranges of rooms around a central yard or (more likely) garden.

The Granaries and Hospital

West of the HQ were two store-buildings or granaries (horrea), recognisable by their raised floors and external buttresses,. The raised floors helped deter vermin and moderate the temperature of any stored goods, especially grain (the Roman army ate spelt wheat and fed their horses barley and oats), whilst the buttresses served only to confuse scholars (since calculations show them to have been structurally unnecessary and, in fact, they were even left off some granaries elsewhere).

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Nearby was another courtyard building that has been interpreted as a hospital or valetudinarium. This reflects the importance the Romans placed upon their military medical service. We will be able to inspect a better-preserved example at Housesteads, both of them featuring a series of rooms (wards?) around that courtyard.

The Barracks

One of the most interesting aspects of Wallsend is its cavalry barracks, split between men and animals. The pits set into the ground, designed to catch the less pleasant by-products of a reliance upon horses, have been identified at an increasing number of Roman military sites. These are invariably accompanied by very high phosphate readings when tested. Cavalrymen were organised in a turma of 32 men (one to each barrack block), whereas infantrymen were placed in a century (centuria) of 80 men (also one to each barrack). Since Wallsend housed a mixed unit, both infantry and cavalry, and we have the cavalry here in the southern third of the fort, then the infantry seem to have been based in the northern third.

In the south-western part of the site, there is a splendid (albeit mirror image) reconstruction (capable of working when built) of the Chesters bath-house (not, please note, on the site of the Wallsend bath-house, which was probably further to the south-west). This will bring home just how inadequate ruins can sometimes be at giving a true impression of the magnificence of a building, especially when we finally get to see the remains upon which it is based at Chesters. Make sure you see the reconstruction Roman latrine north of the main changing room. The baths are periodically opened for inspection and nearby is a small herb garden, showing the range of culinary and medicinal plants that might be found in Roman times.

Figure 7: Reconstructed bath-house

Now it is time to return to the museum, but before we do, note the line of the Branch Wall (marked in cobbles) running down towards the Tyne from the south-east corner of the fort. On our way past, we can also have a look at the monument recording the names of every single Roman whose name has survived from the Wall (with space so new discoveries can be added).

Once in the museum, there is much to do and see, including a rather dramatic representation of stratigraphy, the accumulation of archaeological layers over time. When you have seen everything, pressed all the buttons, and been lectured by the Geordie centurion, find your way to the observation tower (there are both lifts and stairs to get you to the top). Up there, a video demonstration dramatically illustrates how the site has changed over time. There is a fine shopportunity in the foyer to part you from your money before you leave, but don’t buy too much: you will have to carry it with you.

Wall Mile 0 [HB 139–41]

Exit the fort and museum site and turn left, crossing Buddle Street by the zebra crossing at the bend in the road (exercising all due care). If you have time to spare, the positions of the northern barracks and defences are marked out to your right, but we are heading elsewhere.

Here, behind some railings, we have another treat in store, for here is one of the few full-height reconstructions of the curtain wall. Closer inspection reveals that the replica is in fact built slightly to the south of the excavated wall, a series of short stubby posts marking the position of a series of pits which we now know formed berm obstacles. These would have been filled with something like thorn bushes to form the Roman equivalent of a barbed-wire entanglement. The excavated length is actually considerably more than that consolidated, but much still lies under plastic, awaiting the time when funds permit its consolidation too. When examined, it was found that the wall along here collapsed due to proximity to a stream. The collapse of bits of Hadrian’s Wall will become a recurring theme for our journey.

Now we can turn our attention to the reconstructed curtain wall. Although building regulations demanded that it be built to modern standards and with a completely inaccurate handrail at the back, it gives a good impression of the state of our knowledge of what the curtain wall actually looked like. Go towards