The Wall

by Alistair Moffat

  DUX BELLORUM

  Fragments of a lost North British Chronicle, parts of it compiled by a monk called Nennius in the eighth century, spoke of a post-Roman Dux Bellorum, a War Leader. His name was Arthur, and the Nennius text recounts campaigns fought between the Christian British and pagan enemies. These may have been both Germanic and Pictish. Thirteen battles are listed, and toponymic research shows that nine were fought at places which lie between the Roman walls. Did Arthur lead the warbands of the vigorous British kingdoms of southern Scotland, the men of the Old North charged by Theodosius with the protection of the province of Britannia? Geography encourages this thought. History as well as tradition counts Arthur as a cavalry warrior, and his base of operations may have been at what is now known as Roxburgh Castle. The Old Welsh name was Marchidun, the Cavalry Fort.

  By a traditional date of 547, a band of Germanic pirates had established themselves at the stronghold of Bamburgh on the Northumbrian coast. Led by a series of ambitious and dynamic kings, they carved out Bernicia, the territory at the eastern end of the Wall. There is a persistent tradition that the royal family and its warband occupied Arbeia, the fort at South Shields. Archaeologists confirmed the gist of this when they came upon traces of work done on the ditches and a gateway long after the Romans had gone. Sometime around 600, King Oswin of Bernicia was said to have been born within the walls of the fort.

  The Northumbrian kings were anxious to buttress their authority by making clear connections with the Roman past. Its legacy lay all around, and it spoke of power and an ancient authority. Bede of Jarrow reckoned that Hadrian’s Wall still stood close to its full height (and therefore presented an everyday barrier for farmers and travellers), and the forts along it would still have been impressive. Latin and the city of Rome and its papacy still lived in the work of the church. But Roman terminology was also attractive in the temporal world. During royal progresses the retinue of Northumbrian kings imitated Roman practices. Leading the procession into the king’s estates, the villa regia, there was a standard-bearer carrying a Roman insignia called a tufa, a winged orb intended to add dignity to what followed. The royal warband became the comitatus, the royal chaplain the pontifex, and so on. Royal officials were known as praefecti and strongholds like Bamburgh were the urbs regis. All of this was intended to underpin the sense of the Northumbrian kings as inheritors of Rome. The memory of the Empire was still strong and still useful.

  In a much more minor key, the parish structure began to develop as Christian conversion covered the land, and along the Wall it was adapted in a particular way. In the central sector the shape of each parish is oblong so that the lower-lying land near the Tyne formed the southern part and in the north it included a portion of the slopes reaching up to the Whin Sill. It was vital to include upland summer grazing, and the place-names along the Wall show where shepherds and herd-laddies built their temporary shelters. Shield or shiel is what these summer huts were called and, at Sewingshields, High Shield, Winshields and elsewhere they are remembered. The shepherds often used the angled walls of a milecastle or a turret as part of their shelter, and some were substantial as a result.

  As the local economy developed, the plentiful dressed stone of the Wall became very attractive. Already quarried, its purpose long gone and forgotten, and free, all that it needed to become useful again was transport. In the early Middle Ages churches and monasteries were founded close to the Wall and, as they accumulated gifts and land, they began to build. At Tynemouth, Hexham and Carlisle courses of Roman stone can be seen in all of the early masonry. The northern boundary of Lanercost Priory, near Brampton, ran close to the line of the Wall. And after detailed examination of the remaining fabric, scholars have concluded that the magnificent church and its conventual buildings are constructed entirely from Roman stone. In two places Latin inscriptions can still be made out. One of them is upside down.

  The western section of Hadrian’s Wall, from around Birdoswald to the Solway coast at Bowness, has been heavily robbed out and much of it has entirely disappeared. In places even the Vallum is hard to make out. The central sector is much better preserved because of its relative remoteness, and also because of the presence of Border Reivers. An overwhelmingly pastoral and stock-rearing society, they had less interest in building and cultivation.

  BRITANNIA PRIMA

  Britain’s westernmost Roman province lasted longest. As Anglo-Saxon kings and chieftains slowly extended their reach from the east, Britannia Prima appears to have maintained some sort of continuity. The towns at Wroxeter and Chester were not abandoned and may have been inhabited into the seventh century. Comprising Wales, the neighbouring part of the West Midlands, Gloucestershire, Devon and Cornwall, the old province may have sustained itself with the help of Germanic mercenaries. Pressure came not only from the east but also from across the Irish Sea. There was also a fleeting sense of the Empire and its citizens in the derivation of the Welsh word for Wales. Cymru comes from Combrogi (as does Cumbria and Cumberland) and it means ‘Fellow Countrymen’, literally, those who share a common border. And Wales and Cornwall survived long enough to preserve their versions of the P-Celtic language spoken in Britain before the Romans came. Only Breton and Basque outlasted the Empire and the all-pervasive influence of Latin in western Europe. When the old province at last fell to an invader in the 1280s, Edward I of England did two surprising things, both of which seemed to hark back to the days of Britannia Prima. Caernarfon Castle was built in imitation of the late Roman land-walls of Constantinople. And, more mysteriously, Edward had a body thought to be that of an emperor, Constantine II, brought to Wales for burial. Was he at last laying Rome in the west to rest?

  The Wall survived well in the east, for the most part – until a substantial raid was mounted from Scotland, from the old territory of the Caledonii and the lands to the north. In 1745 what was known to his Gaelic-speaking soldiers as Am Bliadhna Thearlaigh, the Year of Charles, began. Invading England by the western route through Carlisle, the Jacobite generals wrongfooted the government armies marching against them. It proved impossible to get men and especially artillery from Newcastle to the west quickly, and, like the Romans, the Hanoverians decided that a road was needed. Commissioned by General Wade, it ran along the line of the Wall in the east for its first 48 kilometres. As a handy source of roadstone, much of the fabric was pulled down, pulverised and levelled. For long stretches the new road follows the course of the Wall exactly and the northern ditch lies immediately adjacent. Appropriately the B6318 is also known as the Military Road. Under the modern tarmac must lie a great deal of archaeology, not only the foundations of the Wall itself but also artefacts, coins, pottery and inscriptions associated with it.

  The Military Road was never used in anger, and it did have the effect of making much of the remote central sector accessible to visitors. Historical interest grew and, with the establishment of the Society of Antiquaries in Newcastle in 1813, a forum for its formal expression came into being. Investigations, preservation and even some excavations began.

  Many showed an interest in the antiquities on their doorstep, but none were as active or as determinant in the recent history of the Wall as John Clayton. Born in 1792, he was a lawyer by profession, a businessman by instinct and a passionate antiquarian. Between 1822 and 1887 he was Town Clerk of Newcastle, overseeing the spectacular expansion of the city. Working closely with the developer, Richard Grainger, he pushed through much of what became Georgian Newcastle. Clayton had the acumen to invest personally in Grainger’s projects, something which has landed officials in Tyneside’s local government in prison in the recent past. From the profits of development and from his huge legal practice, Clayton became wealthy and invested much of his money in actively preserving Hadrian’s Wall. His house at Chesters had the fort of Cilurnum in its grounds, and by the time he was an old man four other forts and much of the central sector of the Wall were in his possession and under the protection of the Chesters Estate.

  A b
iography of John Clayton summed up his thinking:

  To talk of preserving the Wall was useless as long as well-shaped, handy-sized stones lay ready to the hand of the farmer, and the carting away of its stones went forward merrily. The great pity of it was that it was the best portions of the Wall which were removed in this fashion, for the labourers naturally preferred to take the stones that were breast high in the standing wall to stooping and lifting them up from the ground into their carts.

  Appalled at the continuing stone robbing, Clayton set his men on the huge task of preservation. Having bought the land across which the Wall ran, gangs picked up the scatter of rubble and, with great care, rebuilt where they could. When the outer courses had been brought up to the same height, Clayton’s men infilled the core with rubble, clay, mortar and earth. They then topped it off with turf to allow walking and to prevent too much rainwater from leaching into the fabric. So much of this sort of work was done in the central sector that it is sometimes known as Clayton’s Wall.

  Whatever modern archaeologists may think of his methods, John Clayton’s role in the preservation of Hadrian’s great project was absolutely critical. Using his financial muscle, he fended off almost all other interests. Without him there would now be a great deal less to see.

  Anyone who doubts Clayton’s pivotal role or sniffs at his methods should recall that threats to the Wall were not confined to the unenlightened nineteenth century. They continued well into the twentieth. At Cawfields and at Walltown, quarrying was still removing whole sections in the 1920s. But the greatest danger presented itself at a time when economic circumstances might easily have converted it into a reality. As coal mining in the Tyne Valley contracted, 800 men lost their jobs in the pits around Haltwhistle. For such a small community, it was a devastating blow, causing real hardship. But a saviour seemed to appear very quickly. Mr J. Wake of Darlington proposed to set up a new company in the area, Roman Stone Ltd, to begin quarrying along the Whin Sill. The stone lay near the surface, could easily be blasted out and freighted to market from Melkridge – and 500 new jobs would be created. The hungry families of Haltwhistle at last had some hope for a future. But there were protests from antiquarians, academics and others. Mr Wake compromised and promised to leave the Wall remains standing where they were visible on a sliver of whinstone. More protests claimed that the Wall would be left on an unscalable knife-edge, with a 400 foot drop on either side. After the likes of John Buchan and Rudyard Kipling became involved, the quarrying development was finally dropped. The Ancient Monuments Act was strengthened and the Wall was never again threatened in the same way.

  Now, Hadrian’s Wall is a World Heritage Site, one of only 800. A path has been created along its entire length, more and more people walk it each year, and facilities improve in step with them. More than a million people visited some part of the Wall in 2006. With the decline in agriculture, accelerated by outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease (which in 2002 originated at Heddon on the Wall), tourism has become the biggest industry in north Northumberland and north Cumbria, especially in the central sector. Many farms now offer accommodation, pony-trekking, mountain-biking and much else. Almost two thousand years after his mensores pegged out the line of the Wall, the Emperor Hadrian has brought people back to gaze upon his works – and rejoice.

  9

  Days on the Wall

  Imagining the Wall as it was is almost impossible – especially in the east. With the constant hurtle and buzz of traffic, the sprawl of Newcastle and the confining canyons of the city centre, it is difficult to get even a sense of the rise and fall of the land. But at the Castle, what people often call the Castle Keep, in the heart of the city, it is possible to climb up and out of the noise and the river of people to see something of what the Romans saw. Wide stone stairs make for an easy ascent to the battlements and the flat roof. In both directions the view along the river is sweeping, and immediately to the south is the narrowing of the Gateshead Gorge. The Tyne is wide both upriver, particularly at the Dunston Coal Staithes, and downriver as it meanders towards the coast. But below the Castle Keep it is funnelled into the gorge where Hadrian had his engineers build the bridge named after him, approximately on the line of the Swing Bridge. It is the shortest crossing-point and no accident that the High Level, the Tyne Bridge and two others stand nearby. The ground falls away steeply from the Castle Keep down to the quayside, and opposite, on the Gateshead bank, the Hilton Hotel is perched on an equally steep slope.

  To the north of the keep, the main railway line from Scotland crashes straight through to Newcastle Central Station. Bisecting the site of the castle with a black, smoke-stained viaduct, it is a piece of bloody-minded Victorian progress. Castle? Who cares? We need a railway and this is where it needs to go. Oddly, that sort of bloody-mindedness sits well on the line of Hadrian’s Wall. He would not have hesitated either. Under the arches of the now-scruffy viaduct are two bits of exposed archaeology, the remains of a Roman fort built after AD 122. With no information boards to explain, overshadowed by Victorian progress, few people notice them.

  Wallsend is the eastern terminal of the Wall, but the Castle Keep seems a good place to welcome the Emperor to Britannia. And, for some obscure reason, it is better to start an episodic journey along the Wall in the east. Most people who walk the new path start at Wallsend and finish up 135 kilometres later at Bowness-on-Solway. Perhaps their instincts tell them to follow the sun, rising behind them over the North Sea and setting beyond the Solway. Better than walking widdershins.

  In the 1920s and 1930s the suburb of Benwell was built up along the West Road, and a reservoir flooded over most of the site of the fort of Condercum. Nevertheless two fascinating relics can still be seen, lying only a street or two apart. In what looks like someone’s front garden, stand the foundations of a small temple. Dedicated to Antenociticus, a Celtic god, it is squat and surprisingly untouched, with no graffiti or vandalism. Perhaps the powerful spirit of Antenociticus is not entirely fled. One of his neighbours grows potatoes, double-digging in compost and horse-muck every winter. His collection of Roman artefacts covers every flat surface in the sitting room, and beautifully dressed stones line a short driveway.

  Around the corner is something genuinely jaw-dropping. At the foot of a suburban crescent, there is a well-preserved section of the Vallum. Wide and deep, vastly out of proportion with its everyday surroundings, it has the monumental remains of a crossing and a gateway. Only the footing of the piers of the arch are left but they still somehow dwarf the houses, the parked cars and the garden sheds. The sheer incongruity is very attractive. The lady who lives in the house just to the north of the Vallum crossing has a key for the gate, and from her garden (with a Roman rockery) it is possible to see why the fort at Benwell was called Condercum, the Viewpoint Fort. Between the gable ends of the neighbours’ houses and over their garage roofs, it is possible to see over to the Gateshead Fells and, dimly, make out the unmistakable shape of the Angel of the North. These two sites are badly signposted and seen only by the tenacious.

  Back out on the West Road, which runs arrow-straight along the line of the Wall, more surprises wait. At the junction with the A1, a terrifying roundabout, stands Denton Turret and a 40-metre section of Wall. And on the far side of the maelstrom of cars and trucks thundering south, there is another run, two or three courses high this time.

  Once on the B6318, the Military Road, the presence of the Wall becomes clearer. On the right, the northern ditch begins to appear and, as the housing thins out and farmland takes over, traces of the Vallum can sometimes be made out on the left. But the most obvious memory of Rome is the road itself. Straight and with commanding views on either side, it stretches westwards, looking for the high ground and the cliffs of the Whin Sill. At a much quieter roundabout, one with an old name, the Port Gate, it is worth making a detour, turning south off the Wall, down Dere Street, the A68, a few miles to Corbridge.

  The Roman site (no one seems quite sure what to call it) west
of Corbridge gives the first and only sense of something quintessentially Roman – town life. The site is arranged around the Stanegate, what seems in this context to be a main street. A good reconstruction drawing on the information board helps. On the left there is the hulking outline of a granary, and the stumps of columns outside its portals add to the atmosphere of Rome-on-Tyne. In the summertime English Heritage mounts Roman festivals at the weekends with reenactors, Roman cookery, falconry, crafts and much else.

  A few kilometres after the Port Gate, the Military Road begins to descend into the lovely valley of the North Tyne. At the crossroads with the A6079, it is rewarding to turn left and park at the sign for Brunton Turret. This is one of the first places where the Wall stands high. More than ten courses, well above head height, the turret is placed on a steep bank, no ditch needed in front. But its aspect to the north is completely blinded by a thick wood of mature trees. Nevertheless it is atmospheric, a place where it is possible to hear whispers of the long past, men soldiering, talking, complaining, stamping their feet in cold weather, looking up the valley in the summer sunshine. To the west, across the North Tyne, there is a good view of Chesters Fort and its impressive bath house. But a general sense of the first substantial fort on the Wall is made difficult by the way in which it has been excavated, with bits exposed in a version of keyhole archaeology and surrounded by fences.