The Wall

by Alistair Moffat

  In two years of campaigning, perhaps less, that war had been won. No details survive but in AD 142 coins were minted to commemorate a great victory. And in Rome Antoninus Pius was acclaimed Imperator, the first and only time this happened. Job done.

  Or it seemed to be done. The frontier of the Empire had been successfully extended by 150 kilometres, a victory gained and new territory subdued. But some in the imperial administration sniffed. Here are the comments of a Greek civil servant, Appianus:

  The Romans have aimed to preserve their empire by the exercise of prudence rather than to extend their sway indefinitely over poverty-stricken and profitless barbarian peoples. I have seen embassies from some of these in Rome offering themselves as subjects, and the Emperor refusing them, on the grounds that they would be of no use to him. For other peoples, limitless in number, the Emperors appoint the kings, not requiring them for the Empire . . . They surround the Empire with a circle of great camps and guard so great an area of the land and sea like an estate.

  And later, Appianus offered his own interpretation of imperial attitudes to the province first conquered by the armies of Claudius:

  They have occupied the better and greater part of it [Britannia] but they do not care for the rest. For even the part they do occupy is not very profitable to them.

  Others saw it differently and, paradoxically, were more pragmatic about the political wisdom of spending money and resources on invading bits of territory of little economic value. Here Hadrian’s friend, the poet, Annaeus Florus, is talking about two remote provinces, Britannia and mountainous Armenia:

  It was fine and glorious to have acquired them, not for any value, but for the great reputation they brought to the magnificence of the Empire.

  In Britain the job was done efficiently. Over a wide swathe of southern Scotland Urbicus set his victorious soldiers to the tedious task of consolidation. Roads were refurbished and new stretches constructed. Forts were dug. From Glenlochar, near Castle Douglas, and from what is now Gatehouse of Fleet to Castledykes and Bothwellhaugh in Clydesdale, garrisons showed the flag and began to patrol and gather intelligence. Roads struck directly through the heart of dangerous hill country, nowhere more so than the dramatic Dalveen Pass between Upper Nithsdale and the upper reaches of the Clyde. There was an unmistakable sense in the 140s of the beginnings of provincial government.

  The hub of the occupation of the south was at Newstead on the banks of the Tweed, in the lee of the Eildon Hills, the place called Trimontium. Close to Dere Street, which probably bridged the Tweed nearby, at Leaderfoot, Trimontium was the largest fort north of Hadrian’s Wall. With several substantial annexes (fenced and guarded enclosures) around it, Newstead was a supply depot as well as important tactically. Brilliantly excavated by a Melrose solicitor, James Curle, before the First World War, it has given up one grisly memory of warfare in southern Scotland. Buried with a good deal of military rubbish, several skulls were found in a series of pits. Roman burials always took place well away from human habitation, often on roadsides, and in any case the skulls had no associated skeletons. They had not been interred. On Trajan’s Column soldiers are shown raising up the severed heads of Dacians and, at the gates of a camp, two have been impaled on poles and stuck into the ground. At Vindolanda Andrew Birley’s team have recently found a skull which had been stuck on a pole in exactly the same way. DNA analysis has demonstrated that the dead man was probably a native warrior from the kingdom of the Anavionenses. It seems certain that the Newstead skulls were those of captured or killed Selgovan soldiers whose severed heads were spitted on poles and set up at the fort gates in a gruesome display of Roman ruthlessness. We are inclined to see the legionaries and auxiliaries are clinical and efficient killers. This shows an atavistic savagery – something surely worthy of a barbarian.

  After the native kings had been defeated and their lands brought under control, something extraordinary then took place. Here is the entry in the Historia Augusta:

  [Antoninus Pius] conquered the Britons through the agency of the Governor, Lollius Urbicus, and having driven off the barbarians built another wall in turf.

  Another wall! Twenty years after Hadrian commanded his vast project to commence and perhaps fifteen years after its completion, the Roman army built another wall across Britain. The same legions were involved and many of the same soldiers are likely to have started work on a second wall. While they are often stoic about the insanities of army life, soldiers are not immune automata. Many of the older men must have shaken their heads when the orders were given. What was wrong with the first wall?

  Nothing at all. Except that it had been built on the orders of Hadrian. His name was inextricably attached to it, and if Antoninus wished to be seen actively repudiating his policies then one of their greatest monuments needed to be abandoned. Immediately. But this extraordinary decision has another fascinating aspect. It was not extraordinary to the Romans. We see these massive works differently, as expressions of vast expense, resources, will and effort. To abandon something like Hadrian’s Wall as soon as it was completed would have been a profligate waste.

  Antoninus and his generals did not see the decision in this light. At their command was a large, versatile and highly skilled army which would need to be paid and fed whatever happened. The abandonment of Hadrian’s Wall was not a disaster or a waste, just a matter of strategy. Because they had the army, as much a huge and relatively well-disciplined labour force as a fighting machine, the Romans thought on a different scale. They were masters of the world and it was for them to order it as they saw fit.

  These were pervasive attitudes. If their officers thought like this, so did the men and, while the prospect of building another wall will have raised the eyebrows of more than a few centurions, there was no hesitation in setting about the task. In any case, this wall would be easier: half the length and built out of turf, not stone: no problem.

  As with Hadrian’s Wall, the western kings appear to have given more cause for concern and, before any soldier began work on the Wall, it seems that forts were built to hold down the lower Clyde basin. The line chosen was indeed much shorter at 59 kilometres compared with 120 kilometres. It was to run from Bridgeness on the Firth of Forth in the east to Old Kilpatrick on the bank of the Clyde in the west, across the narrow waist of Scotland. Crucially, there was to be no Vallum, a tremendous saving of labour and time, and, while a short sequence of forts was planned at either end, nothing on the scale of the Cumbrian Sea-Wall would be needed.

  TURF WARRIORS

  The garrison of the Antonine Wall is less well attested than that of Hadrian’s Wall and only those forts with named units are listed below.

  Mumrills

  – Ala I Tungrorum

  – Cohors II Thracum

  Rough Castle

  – part of Cohors VI Nerviorum quingenaria peditata

  Castlecary

  – part of Cohors Tungrorum milliaria peditata

  – part of Cohors I Vardullorum milliaria equitata

  – vexilations from II Legion and VI Legion

  Bar Hill

  – Cohors Baetasiorum quingenaria peditata

  – Cohors Hamiorum quingenaria

  Cadder

  – Cohors quingenaria peditata

  Balmuildy

  – Cohors quingenaria peditata

  Castlehill

  – Cohors IV Gallorum quingenaria peditata

  Old Kilpatrick

  – Cohors I Baetasiorum quingenaria peditata

  The Antonine Wall straddled more than the shortest distance between the North Sea and the Atlantic sea-lochs of the west; it was also a man-made recognition of one of Scotland’s most profound geographical divisions. To the south lay Clydesdale and Ayrshire, the fertile Lothians, the gentle slopes of the Southern Uplands and Galloway, and the rich farmland of the Tweed basin. In the north were the mountains and the islands, the formidable rampart of the Highland Line visible for many miles. There was Fife to the north-east,
and beyond it the coastlands of Angus and Tayside, and while these places had powerful links with the south they were nevertheless culturally distinct. What is now Scotland used to be split into two, and Tacitus thought that the north was like a different island.

  And it was. Motorways and modern drainage have erased this ancient frontier. Two thousand years ago, landward communications were much more difficult. At the western end of the line of the Antonine Wall, the Highlands rise up abruptly. In the central section, overland travel to the north was made circuitous and even dangerous by the Flanders Moss. A wide tract of treacherous marshland, it made much of the valley of the meandering River Forth impassable in winter and very awkward in summer. Drainage had to wait until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Only in the east, through the Stirling Gap, was there firm passage. Funnelling under the glowering crag of the great castle, armies intent on the conquest of all of Scotland were forced to march that route. For this now-lost reason of geography, Stirling held the key to the whole kingdom for many centuries.

  With no emperor to interfere, Lollius Urbicus and his surveyors rode from the Forth to the Clyde pegging out the line of the new Wall. They made good decisions. Even though the geography is much less dramatic than the Whin Sill, the Antonine Wall nevertheless commands the ground emphatically. Rising up from the coastal plain at Bo’ness, it quickly finds the high country to the south of the valley of the River Carron. From there long vistas stretch out over west Fife and as far as the Ochil Hills. In contrast with the bleak prospects from the high parts of Hadrian’s Wall, these are views of heavily populated areas, fertile flatlands bordering the Forth and the better-drained terrain towards Alva and Dollar. In the central section, the Wall hops from one vantage point to the next, is by no means straight, and at Croy Hill and Bar Hill it climbs to its highest point above sea-level. The valley of the little River Kelvin provides a handy southern slope where the garrison could look out over the Campsie Fells and the threatening mass of the Drumalban Mountains behind them. At Balmuildy the line turns sharply north-west for a few hundred metres and then strikes through what is now the well-set Glasgow suburb of Bearsden before reaching its terminus at Old Kilpatrick on the northern bank of the Clyde. Only the ford at Bowling lay beyond the end of the Wall; all of the others were upstream.

  Outlier forts and fortlets were built across the river at Bishopton and even further west at Lurg Moor and Outerwards. More substantial were the forts beyond the eastern terminal. Cramond stood on the Forth shore, at the outfall of the River Almond, and, 18 kilometres further east, Inveresk was built near another river-mouth. From these, soldiers could watch the Fife shoreline, probably not fearing attack from that quarter but, rather, attacks on it. The corn-growing Venicones were likely Roman clients, well within the protective compass of the new Wall, and the lookouts at Cramond and Inveresk will have watched for suspicious movement on the northern shore. Further help for native farmers lay beyond. Lollius Urbicus reactivated part of the old Gask Ridge system and there were outpost forts once more at Ardoch, Strageath and north-west of Perth. This was a comprehensive pattern of occupation and an entirely unmissable show of strength. The Empire had come back north.

  Work began on the new Wall. Probably in the summer of 142 the three legions dug the first of their temporary labour camps. The outlines of eighteen of these have been detected, mostly from the air. As at Hadrian’s Wall, construction was organised in legionary lengths and also appears to have begun in the east. Following the line laid out by the surveyors, the gangs first dug a shallow foundation trench. Stone footings were tapped in, made as level as possible and the edges set out with large kerbstones finished only on the outside face. Even though it was to be a turf wall, a great deal of stone was quarried. The building principle was simple: to build a flat and stable foundation, and border it with kerbstones which would keep the width of the Wall consistent and help prevent spreading.

  Culverts were let into the foundations at frequent intervals so that, in winter, or after heavy rain, there would be no ponding behind the rampart. There had been too few culverts on Hadrian’s Wall, and it seemed that the legionary builders were learning.

  Since the basic building material, turf, lay around the line of the Wall and did not need to be quarried, the logistical support for the men working at the site was much less extended and much less complex. Once the stone founds had been laid, virtually every soldier could be involved in construction because they undoubtedly possessed the skills required. On the march, most nights, the Roman army dug temporary camps which used exactly the same methods. Despite the fact that some learned opinion now believes that the Antonine Wall took several years to build, in fact it rose quickly.

  Each legionary was issued with a crescent-shaped turf cutter, something like the tool now used to straighten up the edges of perfect suburban lawns. With it, soldiers expertly sliced out large rectangular pieces of turf. And, as with almost everything they built, the Romans specified a standard size, in this case 45 centimetres by 30 centimetres by 15 centimetres. That is large, and if taken from damp ground, a single turf might have weighed 30 kilograms. One of the advantages of using them was that one man could carry a single piece but, at that weight and bulk, it might easily have disintegrated. If the ground was dry, it would be even more difficult to keep a large piece of turf together. On Trajan’s Column there is an illustration of turf cutting and it shows one soldier loading a large piece onto another man’s back with the help of a rope sling. That seems a lot of handling for a simple job, but it may well have been standard procedure.

  Perhaps ground conditions varied more than they do now. The point of turf as a building material is the grass on top of it. Its roots knit the earth together sufficiently for it to keep its basic shape when lifted out of the ground. These were not the tidy squares of turf delivered by today’s garden centres. Natural pasture in AD 122 had much longer and stronger roots than the wispy stuff grown by farmers and horticulturalists today. If the work on the Antonine Wall was done in the spring and summer when the grass and all the other herbage and the weeds that grew in it were tall, then not only would cutting be awkward, the roots in the ground would have been more vigorous and binding – and in some cases very much longer and tougher.

  Whatever their size, the turfs were laid like stone with each course’s joints bonding as neatly as possible with the middle of the one below. On a base of 4.2 metres, the Wall was able to rise safely to 2.5 metres. For stability the sides sloped, narrowing to a 1.8 metre top. This was not like stone in that sense, and there could be no vertical faces. In any case the profile and possibly the height of the Wall would have altered quite quickly as the turf settled and moisture drained downwards.

  As with Hadrian’s Wall, there is much debate about what the top of the Antonine Wall looked like. Was there a walkway? Was there a wooden breastwork with crenellations? The answer is probably yes to all of these. A sloping turf surface is much easier and quicker to climb than a vertical stone wall, especially one which had been rendered. It seems inconceivable that the soldiers on watch would not have had access to the top of their Wall, or indeed a breastwork to shield them – from the weather if nothing else. And one with crenellations will have made the rampart look higher and more formidable.

  What also made the Wall look taller was the forward ditch. North of the Wall, work-gangs dug down to 3.5 metres and piled the upcast on the northern flank to make the downslope even deeper (the Antonine Wall used much less turf than the original western end of Hadrian’s Wall, between the Irthing and Carlisle, but the ditch was significantly deeper, again giving an impression of greater height). The whole earthwork was 12 metres across. The ditch is the most visible relic of the Wall, there being very little to see of the turf rampart, and surprisingly at its most impressive in Falkirk, at Watling Lodge. Between it and the Wall a substantial berm was left. And behind both, the legionaries laid down a military road which ran the entire length, from Bridgeness to Old Kilpatrick.

/>   One particular element of the building programme is eloquent. On Hadrian’s Wall the soldiers dug pits known as lilia on the north side. Remains of them have been found at Byker and Throckley in Newcastle. Filled with sharpened stakes and then covered over with leaves and twigs, they were the Roman equivalent of barbed wire, intended to break up an assault. On the Antonine Wall the builders appear to have expected attacks and there are examples of extensive fields of lilia. At Rough Castle, near Falkirk, there are no less than ten rows of pits offset like the black squares of a chessboard, and in each row there are twenty pits. This sort of added defence took a good deal of effort and some maintenance – but it was obviously thought necessary.

  The organisation of the garrison on the Antonine Wall was different. And, as in the south, there were changes of plan. At first, forts were to be arranged in a similar order with one every 12 kilometres or so. There were to be seven in all, with fortlets interspersed and, at Camelon, one fort forward of the rampart. And then the plan suddenly changed. As the work-gangs reached the stretch between Bearsden and Duntocher, not far from the Clyde and the end of the line, it was decided to add no less than ten new forts to the Wall. Now there was to be a garrison (of differing sizes) every 3.5 kilometres. What prompted this radical change in plan is not recorded – but it must surely have been something dramatic. Perhaps there was hostile action against the Wall and its soldiers during construction. It lay close to the Highlands, difficult country to patrol, and perhaps warbands erupted out of their glens without any warning and launched themselves at this extraordinary structure and the men who were daring to make it.