Houn's Journal: OFF THE WALL

Today’s adventure is to be to a couple

of sections of Hadrian’s Wall, built early in the second century by the Romans stationed here. But first, we must fortify with another of Avril’s incredible breakfasts. This time, I opted for the whole trout. Oye. The WHOLE trout. It was tender, juicy, and delicious; but that’s a LOT of fish. I ate every bite. And didn’t eat for the rest of the day.
By the time Hadrian became Emperor in 117 AD, the Roman Empire had ceased to expand. Hadrian was concerned to consolidate his boundaries. He visited Britain in 122 AD, and ordered a wall to be built between the Solway Firth in the West and the River Tyne in the east "to separate Romans from Barbarians".
The majority of the wall was built of stone. At first 10 Roman Feet wide, and later 8, it is built of 18" x 12" x 6" blocks. Milecastles were placed at regular intervals. Each pair of Milecastles had two Turrets between them. A Milecastle could garrison between 8 and 32 men. Turrets could also shelter some soldiers though they may have served primarily as look-out vantage points. As Hadrian's project evolved, more legionaries were moved up to the wall and large Forts were built which straddled it, like Chesters (Roman name Cilurnum) which we saw today. These Forts had gates to allow traffic to pass north and south through the wall. The wall was built in only six years and ran for 73 miles across England! An amazing engineering feat. This was a big site, and the fort must have enclosed several acres at least. I’m standing in one of the intermediate turrets of the fort wall. Upper right are the baths. Lower right shows barracks.

Chesters was obviously very important to the Romans who built a sophisticated bridge (very little of which remains today except foundations) across the River Tyne at this point. It seems very likely that Chesters was established first as a station for cavalry and, later, footsoldiers. The reason for placing the fort here was to guard and control the bridge. In the right photo, dead center across the river and just above the embankment, are stones which are all that remains of the bridge.

There’s a small museum which houses hundreds of items, large and small, excavated over the last 160 years at the site. There’s even some early Roman porn!

Nothing of “the wall” can be seen at Chester, except that the fort walls themselves formed part of it. To see the wall, we had to travel further west to Housesteads, another fort in the system. Read the poster at right which explains it better than I can.
This fort was located w-a-y up a hill from where you parked and paid. As we were setting out from the admission center, a rather large man with a very florid face came wheezing in and, with the help of his wife, sank into a chair to perspire and recover. And he had just walked down the hill! We were glad we do daily walks, including hills, and the climb didn’t faze us.
Except for having to dodge sheep droppings almost everywhere. We have encountered sheep wherever we have traveled in Northumberland. It looks like New Zealand out there. Very picturesque when they’re penned in a field; not so much when the field doubles as your path to the ruin.

Those are the ruins at top right, and the gift shop, etc., on the left. Note the white dots: the dreaded ovis aries.
Below: Chuck, the sheep-gate keeper. He shoulda let the darn things out (the sheep, not Loni and Alice). Next: finishing the hill climb.

Once on top, there were more foundations, but better preserved than at Chester’s, and long stretches of the actual wall. The part at left below comes up the hill to meet the fort wall.