Via the temples and forts at Brocolitia and Vercovicium, being the fifteenth day before the Calends of June, 2763
Exhausted from yesterday’s long walk, I sleep well, and at breakfast manage to procure some hot sauce for my eggs — a rare treat. A party of four Midlanders are walking the National Trail like me. They talk about every conceivable thing connected with their walk except the very thing that defines it: the Wall itself. History as a conversation topic is almost as taboo in England as religion and politics.
Landowners determine the fate of ancient monuments more than the solidity of their foundations. Hutton complained in 1801 that his walk along this stretch was ‘miserably soured’ by the recent destruction wrought on the monument by the local landowner, Henry Tulip Esquire, in order ‘to build a farmhouse’. Still, it must be admitted that at least some of the Wall survives here, while nothing remains where it fell victim to General Wade and his road. The State and its army, I suppose, is the biggest landowner of all.
Just north of the village, at Brunton, another stretch of the Wall is to be found, longer and taller than where I left it last night, about half a mile away at Planetrees. Here too is one of the best-preserved turrets, standing up to eleven courses high and with the deep grooves left by the door mechanism still visible at the entrance.
From here the fort of Cilurnum is only a quarter of a mile away on the other side of the river, but the official route takes a big detour to the north. Unaware of the path by the river when I came here in March, I stole across the fields to visit the ruins of the Roman bridge and found two decomposing crows hanging on a particularly vicious barbed wire fence I tore myself to shreds trying to get over. A macabre scarecrow, perhaps, or the landowner’s attempt to put the fear of God into antiquarian trespassers? Whatever the intention of this disturbing message, this time I decide on the extra mile to avoid confrontations with potentially sociopathic gentlemen farmers.
Anyway, half a mile to the modern bridge, and then another half back down the river path brings me to a short stretch of the Wall and the massive V-shaped abutment of the first of the three major river crossings. Also surviving are the deep foundations of the bridge’s easternmost tower. There is supposed to be a carving of a phallus here, a symbolic defense against the ‘evil eye’, but I’m unable to find it. Back in March, the abutment was almost submerged, but though the level has since fallen, there are still waterlogged parts. Poor old Hutton, being ‘obliged to wade’, didn’t get to see it either. Cilurnum’s bath house, one of the best preserved in Britain, rises up immediately on the other side of the river, an impressive sight. Visiting this particular relic feels like a ‘discovery’, being somewhat out of the way and less-than-obviously signposted, and this is just as well, as the frustration of the long detour (with Cilurnum looming tormentingly only a stone’s throw from here) would have been a bad start to the day. It is very spoilt of me, I know, but my Christmas list includes a fully reconstructed and functional Roman bridge across the Tyne, but if pressed I would accept a cheaper suspension bridge like the one at Willowford.
Retracing my steps and passing through the small village of Chollerford, I eventually reach Cilurnum (in English, the oddly generic ‘Chesters’, meaning ‘Roman fort’, as though the progenitor of all chesters) and all is well again. Though low-lying and subtle as usual, the ruins here whisper stories about their ancient inhabitants. Barrack blocks, complete with colonnaded verandas, Commanding Officer’s residence with private bath house and hypocaust (under-floor heating system), regimental strong room and perimeter wall (also showing where Hadrian’s Wall joined the fort) are all crystal clear and irrefutable. But the jewel of Cilurnum is the common bath house by the river. In parts the walls stand over my head, and in the whole province of Britannia the functions of the various treatment rooms are nowhere more obvious than here. You can still put your birrus britannicus (a native hooded cloak) in one of the arched alcoves in the changing room and sit on the bench to sweat in the calidarium (hot room). Freezing, naked in the frigidarium (cold room) requires almost no imagination at all, and neither does relieving yourself into the deep latrine channels. There is no one about, so I yield to the temptation to sit and rest in the calidarium, fully clothed of course, and the sun manages a little of what the hypocaust did a couple of thousand years ago.
Yet again the small museum is stuffed with the treasures from this and the surrounding forts. Found here, life-size but headless Juno Dolichena, queen of the gods of both East and West, stands on a cow, and from Coventina’s shrine at Brocolitia, three water nymphs drink from their horns. This museum was dedicated to the great John Clayton, born in 1792 and former owner of this estate. Though a lawyer by trade, he took it upon himself to save Hadrian’s Wall from destruction by local landowners by buying up as much of it as he could manage, relocating the farmers and instigating an extensive programme of excavation and restoration. Without Clayton, Hadrian’s Wall might only exist today in history books, and so my respect and admiration for the man is boundless.
Leaving a site like this is always difficult, so I dawdle a little with coffee and cake before steeling myself for the stiff march up the other side of the Tyne Valley and through the village of Walwick. The path takes another wide detour north, so I risk a shortcut, first along the road and then through meadows, and soon arrive back at what seems to be the Ditch. A little behind and running straight and parallel with the Ditch is a flat grassy ramp. Is this a remnant of the Wall, or a length of Wade’s road that escaped asphalt? The Ordnance Survey map gives no indication.
The path continues beside the Ditch, rising steadily before passing through a small wood. A fine view greets me on the other side: at Black Carts the Wall climbs the hill ahead, dead straight and heading west, the tallest and longest manifestation yet. I must first head downhill, past the clear outline of Milecastle 29, then up again in the shadow of the Wall and another well-preserved turret, eyed by suspicious cows chewing the cud in the Ditch. After half a mile the monument peters out to become a grass-covered mound of rubble at the top of the hill. The view over the rugged moors and towards the Cheviot Hills is beautiful, so I take my lunch here: the last of my sandwiches and a bottle of good ale from the gift shop at Chesters. This is a fine spot to contemplate, being the most northerly point of the Wall, and by extension of the Roman Empire, for most of its life. Forwards, the black massif of the Cheviots, the wild land of the Selgovae and Votadini tribes, must have seemed bleak and uninviting to the soldiers stationed on the Wall. A backward glance is already friendlier, and must have grown only more so as their thoughts fled the barbarians, continuing eastwards for thousands of miles and not stopping until the perfumed gardens of the Levant.
A little further on, the line of the Wall turns fractionally southwards (and will continue so until Carlisle) and the Ditch breaks up into a confusion of massive boulders. This is ‘Limestone Corner’, one of the stretches where supplementary fortifications were abandoned and suggesting that the Wall was more a showpiece than a truly defensive structure. The path continues gently downhill for the next half a mile until Carraw. Here the ramparts and general outline of Brocolitia, the Wall’s fifth fort, are more clearly discernable than Vindobala or Onnum, but no actual buildings are visible. The interest in this site lies in the tiny religious complex a little to the west. No less than three temples have been discovered here: of the Nymphaeum, only a few scattered blocks of masonry remain, but the walls of the Mithraeum survive waist-high. Wooden posts, altar stones and statuary were discovered here in 1936, submerged in the bog, and subsequently replaced with replicas (I saw the originals in the Hancock Museum on my first day). Remains of wood and wicker-work from the seating had been preserved in the anaerobic peat, and walking down the central aisle towards the altar, even today one has the feeling of being in a small, intimate chapel. Mithraea were dark places, apparently, symbolizing the central allegory of the cave in which Mithras slaughtered the ‘primordial bull’ in order to give life to the world. The sniffy early Christians objected to such sacrificial rites and perhaps resented the competition it offered their own ‘supreme sacrifice’ myth. It is known that Christians destroyed Mithraea in the fourth century, and perhaps this one fell victim to the zealots too.
I still have enough wine in a plastic bottle to make a few more small libations, and I hope Mithras won’t be offended by this rather meager offering, but these days, like Antenociticus, he should probably be glad of what he can get. I think of the altar carving I saw in Newcastle while I pour, with Mithras looking fine in his Phrygian cap — bravely killing the bull while being attacked by a scorpion and a wild dog. A replica of one of the god’s helpers found here, either Cautes or Cautopates, I forget which, stands in the aisle beside me, watching over the ceremony. Strange indeed to imagine this dark, trippy Eastern mystery cult being nurtured here in wildest Northumbria seventeen centuries ago! No doubt the nearby springs had been sacred to the native Britons long before the Romans arrived and influenced the choice for the site. One is always tempted to ascribe a nebulous other-worldliness to such places and to throw words like ‘ley lines’ around to explain it. The scientist in me scoffs at such nonsense, but the fact remains that when I first came here three years ago, I sat down to rest, stretched myself out on the grass in front of the temple and immediately fell into a deep, dreamless sleep from which I woke remarkably refreshed half an hour later. Was it the healing life-force of the bull’s blood that replenished me? Or the half-bottle of strong Spanish wine I’d had with my lunch?
The Temple of Coventina, the probably native goddess of springs and wells, is now just a bog, but a drop of my ‘holy wine’ remains, so I pour a last libation into the peaty water. John Clayton excavated this site in 1876 and the carvings of the goddesses recovered are in the museum at Chesters I visited this morning.
I continue westwards, feeling invigorated and holy, and this is just as well, because the terrain feels more rugged with every step and I know that the rest of the day’s walk is an ever more exhilarating roller-coaster of escarpments that even today make you tremble with awe and muscle failure at the might of the Roman juggernaut.
The path continues for the next two miles beside the Ditch, past the best preserved remains of a milecastle yet seen (number 33, more later) and a similarly well-preserved Turret 33b before climbing the hill towards Sewingshields. I pass through a wood, with crags falling away to my right, and on the other side the Wall appears again, still climbing the hill and following the escarpment’s every exhausting contour. The views over Broomlee Lough and the Northumbrian moors are magnificent. A trig point at the top of the hill marks just over a thousand feet above sea level — not quite the highest point of the Wall, but perhaps the most beautiful. All but the strongest of frames will be flagging at this point, mine being no exception, and so I gather resources and exhort myself to forget the frailty of the body and enjoy these moments, for Hadrian’s Wall, indeed life itself, is rarely better than this.
The Wall peters out at the top, to be replaced by a rather disappointing dry-stone dyke, even if it is ‘recycled’ from the monument’s masonry. However, as long as the body isn’t suffering too terribly, the ups and downs of the path, each one presenting a new and surprising vista, are still a delight, especially knowing as I do what is at the end of this stretch. After a punishing mile, the Wall appears again on the other side of a wood, neatly and evenly restored to give a hint of what it looked like when new. Towering before me is the fort of Vercovicium (‘Housesteads’ in English), the eighth and finest on Hadrian’s Wall. There is a Roman well in the vicinity, apparently, but I lack the time to divine it today. At the bottom of the hill, at Knag Burn, a gap in the Wall witnesses an unusual ‘civilian gateway’, added, it seems, to ease the pressure of traffic through the fort. This was the immigration and customs control of the ancient world, and though no separate ‘nothing to declare’ gate was needed when entering the Roman Empire with a herd of cows, the principle is the same.
It’s a quarter to six by the time I’ve circumambulated the fort and arrived at the museum, and I’m worried that it’s already closed. Fortunately it isn’t, and the friendly attendant tells me I can stay on the site as long as I like, as long as I close the gate after me. This warms my heart after the frosty reception I received at Segedunum. Though tiny again, the museum has a lot on display, such as the carving of three men in birri britannici. When William Stukeley, antiquarian and friend of Isaac Newton, came here in 1725, the landscape was literally littered with altar stones and statuary. Who knows how much of Hadrian’s Wall’s stonework is still buried, lost to private collections or hidden in the walls of farmhouses?
Surviving in the fort are the waist-high remains of the praetorium (headquarters), hospital, barracks, granaries (the best, alongside Coria’s) and latrines (the best along the Wall). Perched on the hillside, there is also a fine view to the East of the soaring and plunging escarpment I have just travelled. The perimeter wall, though not as high as it once was, is unbroken, and so the impression of actually being in a Roman fortress or castle in nowhere stronger along the frontier. Adjoining the fort to the south are the partially excavated remains of the vicus, or civilian settlement. It’s not hard to imagine what the thousand or more Tungrians (a Germanic or Gaulish tribe) stationed here would have needed to help them forget they were perched on the edge of the world, and it’s not surprising how quickly the Britons gathered around the fort to meet those needs. Hadrian disapproved of the vices rife in the civilian settlements, but he was wise enough not to prohibit them. Soldiers weren’t allowed to marry officially until the third century, but a blind eye was turned to unofficial marriages in the vici. When Septimius Severus lifted the ban, families of soldiers began to move into the forts themselves. The Roman Army was going native, but the vicus and its vices continued to boom. In the foundations of one building, since nicknamed ‘the murder house’, two skeletons were found apparently concealed under a newly laid floor.
Hadrian’s Wall, here doubling as the fort’s northern wall, now continues through another wood, and when it emerges, a curious sight greets me: a tiny fort, like Vercovicium’s baby brother, annexes the Wall. This is one of the ‘milecastles’ (number 37) that I’ve been mentioning intermittently. Playing card shaped, they typically contained two small barracks with a road running between them, a staircase up to the wall walk and two entrances. Here the north entrance still has part of its arch, but intriguingly falls away over the cliff into empty space — a gateway to nowhere. Scholars still argue about the purpose of the milecastles, but most agree that they were the walls original ‘forts’ and ‘checkpoints’, and that their importance probably diminished after the building of the larger forts.
The Wall is bigger and bolder now, winding along the ridge and dipping fearlessly into every gulley. There is another long, gradual ascent, again reaching about a thousand feet above sea level. The Wall peters out at the top, then drops steeply, but the views over Crag Lough and the wooded cliffs behind it are breathtaking. At the bottom the path continues up again and along the wooded cliffs I saw from the top of Hotbank Crags, but I’m saving this part of the walk until tomorrow. Instead I continue along the military road that runs just behind the Wall, built some decades after it. The flagstones and kerb have all been worn away or stolen of course, but what the Romans built, they built to last. Nearly two thousand years later, the solidity of the foundations makes this road a delight to walk on as it winds over the difficult, rocky moorland just below the ridge. After a mile or so, at Peel Crags, the green road drops to a black one. I continue downhill in the peculiar pre-dusk light until I meet the Vallum, which has wisely refused to climb the ridge since I last saw it at Sewingshields.
My lodgings are at the youth hostel, where, for a small bribe, I managed to procure a private room, and take supper at the adjacent ‘Twice Brewed Inn’. Neither wishing to sully my newly purified body after the visit to the temple complex at Brocilitia, nor to offend Mithras by consuming the sacred bull merely for carnal pleasure, I disdain the beef, and indeed the flesh of any hornèd beast, and order instead the humble cod, encrusted with bitter herbs.
Exhausted from yesterday’s long walk, I sleep well, and at breakfast manage to procure some hot sauce for my eggs — a rare treat. A party of four Midlanders are walking the National Trail like me. They talk about every conceivable thing connected with their walk except the very thing that defines it: the Wall itself. History as a conversation topic is almost as taboo in England as religion and politics.
Landowners determine the fate of ancient monuments more than the solidity of their foundations. Hutton complained in 1801 that his walk along this stretch was ‘miserably soured’ by the recent destruction wrought on the monument by the local landowner, Henry Tulip Esquire, in order ‘to build a farmhouse’. Still, it must be admitted that at least some of the Wall survives here, while nothing remains where it fell victim to General Wade and his road. The State and its army, I suppose, is the biggest landowner of all.
Just north of the village, at Brunton, another stretch of the Wall is to be found, longer and taller than where I left it last night, about half a mile away at Planetrees. Here too is one of the best-preserved turrets, standing up to eleven courses high and with the deep grooves left by the door mechanism still visible at the entrance.
From here the fort of Cilurnum is only a quarter of a mile away on the other side of the river, but the official route takes a big detour to the north. Unaware of the path by the river when I came here in March, I stole across the fields to visit the ruins of the Roman bridge and found two decomposing crows hanging on a particularly vicious barbed wire fence I tore myself to shreds trying to get over. A macabre scarecrow, perhaps, or the landowner’s attempt to put the fear of God into antiquarian trespassers? Whatever the intention of this disturbing message, this time I decide on the extra mile to avoid confrontations with potentially sociopathic gentlemen farmers.
Anyway, half a mile to the modern bridge, and then another half back down the river path brings me to a short stretch of the Wall and the massive V-shaped abutment of the first of the three major river crossings. Also surviving are the deep foundations of the bridge’s easternmost tower. There is supposed to be a carving of a phallus here, a symbolic defense against the ‘evil eye’, but I’m unable to find it. Back in March, the abutment was almost submerged, but though the level has since fallen, there are still waterlogged parts. Poor old Hutton, being ‘obliged to wade’, didn’t get to see it either. Cilurnum’s bath house, one of the best preserved in Britain, rises up immediately on the other side of the river, an impressive sight. Visiting this particular relic feels like a ‘discovery’, being somewhat out of the way and less-than-obviously signposted, and this is just as well, as the frustration of the long detour (with Cilurnum looming tormentingly only a stone’s throw from here) would have been a bad start to the day. It is very spoilt of me, I know, but my Christmas list includes a fully reconstructed and functional Roman bridge across the Tyne, but if pressed I would accept a cheaper suspension bridge like the one at Willowford.
Retracing my steps and passing through the small village of Chollerford, I eventually reach Cilurnum (in English, the oddly generic ‘Chesters’, meaning ‘Roman fort’, as though the progenitor of all chesters) and all is well again. Though low-lying and subtle as usual, the ruins here whisper stories about their ancient inhabitants. Barrack blocks, complete with colonnaded verandas, Commanding Officer’s residence with private bath house and hypocaust (under-floor heating system), regimental strong room and perimeter wall (also showing where Hadrian’s Wall joined the fort) are all crystal clear and irrefutable. But the jewel of Cilurnum is the common bath house by the river. In parts the walls stand over my head, and in the whole province of Britannia the functions of the various treatment rooms are nowhere more obvious than here. You can still put your birrus britannicus (a native hooded cloak) in one of the arched alcoves in the changing room and sit on the bench to sweat in the calidarium (hot room). Freezing, naked in the frigidarium (cold room) requires almost no imagination at all, and neither does relieving yourself into the deep latrine channels. There is no one about, so I yield to the temptation to sit and rest in the calidarium, fully clothed of course, and the sun manages a little of what the hypocaust did a couple of thousand years ago.
Yet again the small museum is stuffed with the treasures from this and the surrounding forts. Found here, life-size but headless Juno Dolichena, queen of the gods of both East and West, stands on a cow, and from Coventina’s shrine at Brocolitia, three water nymphs drink from their horns. This museum was dedicated to the great John Clayton, born in 1792 and former owner of this estate. Though a lawyer by trade, he took it upon himself to save Hadrian’s Wall from destruction by local landowners by buying up as much of it as he could manage, relocating the farmers and instigating an extensive programme of excavation and restoration. Without Clayton, Hadrian’s Wall might only exist today in history books, and so my respect and admiration for the man is boundless.
Leaving a site like this is always difficult, so I dawdle a little with coffee and cake before steeling myself for the stiff march up the other side of the Tyne Valley and through the village of Walwick. The path takes another wide detour north, so I risk a shortcut, first along the road and then through meadows, and soon arrive back at what seems to be the Ditch. A little behind and running straight and parallel with the Ditch is a flat grassy ramp. Is this a remnant of the Wall, or a length of Wade’s road that escaped asphalt? The Ordnance Survey map gives no indication.
The path continues beside the Ditch, rising steadily before passing through a small wood. A fine view greets me on the other side: at Black Carts the Wall climbs the hill ahead, dead straight and heading west, the tallest and longest manifestation yet. I must first head downhill, past the clear outline of Milecastle 29, then up again in the shadow of the Wall and another well-preserved turret, eyed by suspicious cows chewing the cud in the Ditch. After half a mile the monument peters out to become a grass-covered mound of rubble at the top of the hill. The view over the rugged moors and towards the Cheviot Hills is beautiful, so I take my lunch here: the last of my sandwiches and a bottle of good ale from the gift shop at Chesters. This is a fine spot to contemplate, being the most northerly point of the Wall, and by extension of the Roman Empire, for most of its life. Forwards, the black massif of the Cheviots, the wild land of the Selgovae and Votadini tribes, must have seemed bleak and uninviting to the soldiers stationed on the Wall. A backward glance is already friendlier, and must have grown only more so as their thoughts fled the barbarians, continuing eastwards for thousands of miles and not stopping until the perfumed gardens of the Levant.
A little further on, the line of the Wall turns fractionally southwards (and will continue so until Carlisle) and the Ditch breaks up into a confusion of massive boulders. This is ‘Limestone Corner’, one of the stretches where supplementary fortifications were abandoned and suggesting that the Wall was more a showpiece than a truly defensive structure. The path continues gently downhill for the next half a mile until Carraw. Here the ramparts and general outline of Brocolitia, the Wall’s fifth fort, are more clearly discernable than Vindobala or Onnum, but no actual buildings are visible. The interest in this site lies in the tiny religious complex a little to the west. No less than three temples have been discovered here: of the Nymphaeum, only a few scattered blocks of masonry remain, but the walls of the Mithraeum survive waist-high. Wooden posts, altar stones and statuary were discovered here in 1936, submerged in the bog, and subsequently replaced with replicas (I saw the originals in the Hancock Museum on my first day). Remains of wood and wicker-work from the seating had been preserved in the anaerobic peat, and walking down the central aisle towards the altar, even today one has the feeling of being in a small, intimate chapel. Mithraea were dark places, apparently, symbolizing the central allegory of the cave in which Mithras slaughtered the ‘primordial bull’ in order to give life to the world. The sniffy early Christians objected to such sacrificial rites and perhaps resented the competition it offered their own ‘supreme sacrifice’ myth. It is known that Christians destroyed Mithraea in the fourth century, and perhaps this one fell victim to the zealots too.
I still have enough wine in a plastic bottle to make a few more small libations, and I hope Mithras won’t be offended by this rather meager offering, but these days, like Antenociticus, he should probably be glad of what he can get. I think of the altar carving I saw in Newcastle while I pour, with Mithras looking fine in his Phrygian cap — bravely killing the bull while being attacked by a scorpion and a wild dog. A replica of one of the god’s helpers found here, either Cautes or Cautopates, I forget which, stands in the aisle beside me, watching over the ceremony. Strange indeed to imagine this dark, trippy Eastern mystery cult being nurtured here in wildest Northumbria seventeen centuries ago! No doubt the nearby springs had been sacred to the native Britons long before the Romans arrived and influenced the choice for the site. One is always tempted to ascribe a nebulous other-worldliness to such places and to throw words like ‘ley lines’ around to explain it. The scientist in me scoffs at such nonsense, but the fact remains that when I first came here three years ago, I sat down to rest, stretched myself out on the grass in front of the temple and immediately fell into a deep, dreamless sleep from which I woke remarkably refreshed half an hour later. Was it the healing life-force of the bull’s blood that replenished me? Or the half-bottle of strong Spanish wine I’d had with my lunch?
The Temple of Coventina, the probably native goddess of springs and wells, is now just a bog, but a drop of my ‘holy wine’ remains, so I pour a last libation into the peaty water. John Clayton excavated this site in 1876 and the carvings of the goddesses recovered are in the museum at Chesters I visited this morning.
I continue westwards, feeling invigorated and holy, and this is just as well, because the terrain feels more rugged with every step and I know that the rest of the day’s walk is an ever more exhilarating roller-coaster of escarpments that even today make you tremble with awe and muscle failure at the might of the Roman juggernaut.
The path continues for the next two miles beside the Ditch, past the best preserved remains of a milecastle yet seen (number 33, more later) and a similarly well-preserved Turret 33b before climbing the hill towards Sewingshields. I pass through a wood, with crags falling away to my right, and on the other side the Wall appears again, still climbing the hill and following the escarpment’s every exhausting contour. The views over Broomlee Lough and the Northumbrian moors are magnificent. A trig point at the top of the hill marks just over a thousand feet above sea level — not quite the highest point of the Wall, but perhaps the most beautiful. All but the strongest of frames will be flagging at this point, mine being no exception, and so I gather resources and exhort myself to forget the frailty of the body and enjoy these moments, for Hadrian’s Wall, indeed life itself, is rarely better than this.
The Wall peters out at the top, to be replaced by a rather disappointing dry-stone dyke, even if it is ‘recycled’ from the monument’s masonry. However, as long as the body isn’t suffering too terribly, the ups and downs of the path, each one presenting a new and surprising vista, are still a delight, especially knowing as I do what is at the end of this stretch. After a punishing mile, the Wall appears again on the other side of a wood, neatly and evenly restored to give a hint of what it looked like when new. Towering before me is the fort of Vercovicium (‘Housesteads’ in English), the eighth and finest on Hadrian’s Wall. There is a Roman well in the vicinity, apparently, but I lack the time to divine it today. At the bottom of the hill, at Knag Burn, a gap in the Wall witnesses an unusual ‘civilian gateway’, added, it seems, to ease the pressure of traffic through the fort. This was the immigration and customs control of the ancient world, and though no separate ‘nothing to declare’ gate was needed when entering the Roman Empire with a herd of cows, the principle is the same.
It’s a quarter to six by the time I’ve circumambulated the fort and arrived at the museum, and I’m worried that it’s already closed. Fortunately it isn’t, and the friendly attendant tells me I can stay on the site as long as I like, as long as I close the gate after me. This warms my heart after the frosty reception I received at Segedunum. Though tiny again, the museum has a lot on display, such as the carving of three men in birri britannici. When William Stukeley, antiquarian and friend of Isaac Newton, came here in 1725, the landscape was literally littered with altar stones and statuary. Who knows how much of Hadrian’s Wall’s stonework is still buried, lost to private collections or hidden in the walls of farmhouses?
Surviving in the fort are the waist-high remains of the praetorium (headquarters), hospital, barracks, granaries (the best, alongside Coria’s) and latrines (the best along the Wall). Perched on the hillside, there is also a fine view to the East of the soaring and plunging escarpment I have just travelled. The perimeter wall, though not as high as it once was, is unbroken, and so the impression of actually being in a Roman fortress or castle in nowhere stronger along the frontier. Adjoining the fort to the south are the partially excavated remains of the vicus, or civilian settlement. It’s not hard to imagine what the thousand or more Tungrians (a Germanic or Gaulish tribe) stationed here would have needed to help them forget they were perched on the edge of the world, and it’s not surprising how quickly the Britons gathered around the fort to meet those needs. Hadrian disapproved of the vices rife in the civilian settlements, but he was wise enough not to prohibit them. Soldiers weren’t allowed to marry officially until the third century, but a blind eye was turned to unofficial marriages in the vici. When Septimius Severus lifted the ban, families of soldiers began to move into the forts themselves. The Roman Army was going native, but the vicus and its vices continued to boom. In the foundations of one building, since nicknamed ‘the murder house’, two skeletons were found apparently concealed under a newly laid floor.
Hadrian’s Wall, here doubling as the fort’s northern wall, now continues through another wood, and when it emerges, a curious sight greets me: a tiny fort, like Vercovicium’s baby brother, annexes the Wall. This is one of the ‘milecastles’ (number 37) that I’ve been mentioning intermittently. Playing card shaped, they typically contained two small barracks with a road running between them, a staircase up to the wall walk and two entrances. Here the north entrance still has part of its arch, but intriguingly falls away over the cliff into empty space — a gateway to nowhere. Scholars still argue about the purpose of the milecastles, but most agree that they were the walls original ‘forts’ and ‘checkpoints’, and that their importance probably diminished after the building of the larger forts.
The Wall is bigger and bolder now, winding along the ridge and dipping fearlessly into every gulley. There is another long, gradual ascent, again reaching about a thousand feet above sea level. The Wall peters out at the top, then drops steeply, but the views over Crag Lough and the wooded cliffs behind it are breathtaking. At the bottom the path continues up again and along the wooded cliffs I saw from the top of Hotbank Crags, but I’m saving this part of the walk until tomorrow. Instead I continue along the military road that runs just behind the Wall, built some decades after it. The flagstones and kerb have all been worn away or stolen of course, but what the Romans built, they built to last. Nearly two thousand years later, the solidity of the foundations makes this road a delight to walk on as it winds over the difficult, rocky moorland just below the ridge. After a mile or so, at Peel Crags, the green road drops to a black one. I continue downhill in the peculiar pre-dusk light until I meet the Vallum, which has wisely refused to climb the ridge since I last saw it at Sewingshields.
My lodgings are at the youth hostel, where, for a small bribe, I managed to procure a private room, and take supper at the adjacent ‘Twice Brewed Inn’. Neither wishing to sully my newly purified body after the visit to the temple complex at Brocilitia, nor to offend Mithras by consuming the sacred bull merely for carnal pleasure, I disdain the beef, and indeed the flesh of any hornèd beast, and order instead the humble cod, encrusted with bitter herbs.
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