Terri-On-The-Wall

CHESTERS (Part 3) Other points of interest

2009-07-09T22:32:00.004+01:00

This is a fabulous example of a Roman fort strongroom, where the weapons and treasure of the army unit would have been kept inside the headquarters building (principia). Roman forts are basically playing-card shaped: although the size and layout varied in Britain as well as in the Empire as a whole, there were some basic similarities throughout. There were generally four entrances at the sides when the fort was built, though entrances may have been blocked up later on. The principia is very easy to identify, as it lay at the centre of the fort with its entrance facing North; this entrance would be at the end of the street which ran in a straight line from the North Gate. The strong-room, as you can see, is partly sunken and was reached by a short flight of steps from the regimental chapel where the statues, altars and standards of the regiment were kept. Roman remains have the tendency to bring out the 10-year old in everyone: don't you just LOVE flights of steps going underground like this? Even when they don't really go anywhere!

CHESTERS (Part 2): Bathhouse

2009-07-05T12:58:00.009+01:00

One of the most interesting features of the Chesters site is the bathouse, built on the river bank. In the picture on the left you can see this nicely intact set of seven niches in the apoditerium (changing-room). As the English Heritage guide-book says, the niches are more likely to have held statues than bather's clothing, but nevertheless you get a feeling of the room's purpose from their presence. I confess I'm not sure what the stone trough in the foreground left is, as these pictures were taken a year ago, but I will update this page the next time I visit the site.

The bathhouse was rebuilt several times during its lifetime and is one of the best-preserved in Britain. Other points of interest are an almost intact D-shaped basin in one of the caldaria (hot rooms) and a well-preserved stoke-hole at the back of the building (see central top picture, with the person - me! - being used to show the scale). You can also see the remains of the latrines (am I alone in finding Roman sanitary arrangements rather fascinating?) and the outline of the cold plunge bath in the frigidarium (cold room).

Our Roman bathers at Chesters would have enjoyed the view across the river which you can see above in the right-hand picture, but I imagine it would have looked less wild than today. Environmental archaeologists have shown that the Romans cut down a lot of trees in the Wall zone - they needed the wood for their endless fort-building, and for many other purposes. Besides, you would not have wanted to give a bunch of barbarians the opportunity to sneak up in the trees across the river, from where they could easily swim across at night and attack you in your bath. Commanding views were the order of the day (if you'll pardon the pun).

CHESTERS (Cilurnum)

2009-01-03T22:55:00.011Z

Whatever you do, if you're coming to see the Wall, don't miss this one! Set in the grounds of a private house with typical English parkland is a very impressive set of fort remains. In other words, like many Wall forts, the land is privately owned - but unlike, for example, Lanchester, this is a beautifully restored and well-kept site - and it is open to the public. For aficionados of Roman stone and brickwork, I can promise you that many of the visible remains at Chesters are built with some of the neatest opus quadratum (squared stonework) that I've ever seen on a British Roman fort. Fort brickwork in the North of Britain is apt to be rough - the buildings were erected by soldiers, after all, not the master craftsmen of monumental Roman buildings in Italy and elsewhere - but the stonework at Chesters is very neat. Just look at these gloriously straight lines!

There is a small museum: sadly it's very Victorian in display style and labelling, but it contains some very important finds. No up-to-date catalogue of the Museum is available (you will get a free fold-up leaflet thing with line drawings on it) but if you ask the staff nicely they will show you the original catalogue made in the early 20th century. Last but not least, if you go over to the other side of the river, you can see another British rarity: the remains of a Roman bridge.

Next forts along the Wall: Rudchester (Vindobala) and Haltonchesters (Onnum)

2009-01-03T22:37:00.008Z

According to my indispensable Wall guide by Guy de la Bedoyere (op.cit.), Rudchester was built as a cavalry fort. You will pretty much have to take his word for this, because there is not a lot to see at this site. The same can apparently be said of the next fort along the Wall at Haltonchesters, which we haven't managed to see yet. Because I'm a completist (i.e. a total anorak when it comes to Roman remains), I have no doubt that we will make another attempt to find it the next time we are up in the Wall area.

I really wish "Time Team" would come and work some of their three-day archaeological miracles on these sadly neglected Wall sites - there are far too many of them about for my liking.

The Vallum

2008-06-16T22:07:00.007+01:00

After Heddon-on-the-Wall, there's not a great deal of Wall to be seen. Most of the stone was robbed away over the course of many centuries to make houses, barns, churches and dry stone walls. However, as you speed along the fabulous B6318, which is, of course, a Roman Road, you will notice a great v-shaped gash of a ditch which runs through the fields to your left. This is the Vallum, a huge defensive ditch which runs on the South side of the Wall. You can see its profile in this picture - as an earthwork, it is very impressive. Do not confuse it with the Wall Ditch, which is not quite as deep, and runs along the North side of the Wall (some stretches of the Ditch can be seen along the B6318 in some of the fields to your right).

The Vallum seems to have been added some time after the Wall was built. The fact that it is on the South side of the Wall seems to imply that barbarian attacks (perhaps from disaffected groups of the Brigante tribe) could come from any direction. Crossings were put in across the Vallum to allow access to milecastles and forts, but there is only one remaining example of this, and we haven't seen it yet! (Watch this space...)

Both Ditch and Vallum would have held entanglements to trap unwary attackers, particularly horsemen: the Ancient World equivalent of barbed wire consisted of sharpened poles and twiggy branches - very nasty if you fell onto them. The soldiers on the Wall would have had the perfect opportunity to shoot or spear you as you attempted to escape: not unlike shooting fish in the proverbial barrel.

HEDDON-ON-THE-WALL

2008-06-15T19:26:00.005+01:00

Now this is where Hadrian's Wall starts to get really exciting - when it ceases to be urban. This 50 or 60 metre stretch of stonework is in its own peaceful grassy area, and is located just outside the wonderful village of Heddon-on-the-Wall, just off the A69. There is a fabulous view across the north of Newcastle from the car-park behind the Swan pub - more of which above.

DENTON HALL TURRET: Forts, Milecastles and Turrets Explained

2008-06-15T18:51:00.005+01:00

Negotiate your way around the junction of the A69 and the A186 and you will find another bit of Wall, just opposite a large Jacobean stone house which I presume is Denton Hall. This bit of the Wall is best viewed on foot; there are underpasses between the two roads and you can leave your car in the layby back at the Denton stretch of Wall (see below). This stretch is about the same length, but is remarkable for preserving one of the Wall Turrets. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Hadrianic Wall design, I need to explain the difference between forts, milecastles and turrets:

FORTS were built on a playing-card shape, as you can clearly see at Wallsend (Segedunum), and were designed to house large numbers of soldiers as they made their way across the Roman Empire. Temporary forts were constructed of timber and turf, and they were later rebuilt in stone if their position was thought to be strategically important enough. In the case of Hadrian's Wall, forts ranged from 2 acres to nearly 10 acres in size, and were built at the same time as the narrowing of the Wall was ordered; in other words, they were not part of the original design.

MILECASTLES were part of the original design, and were meant to allow access through the Wall. As their name suggests, they were built every mile, and they were "miniature forts attached to the south face of the wall and were equipped with sheltered accommodation". (Guy de la Bedoyere, "Hadrian's Wall: History and Guide", pp 12 -26, Tempus Publishing Ltd 1998 - a must-have book for Wall-lovers). They could have accommodated from 12 to 30 soldiers, depending on which scholar you choose to believe.

TURRETS "were even simpler and were not equipped with gates through the Wall." (ibid.). They probably had two or more floors; the upper levels would have been reached by wooden staircases or ladders which of course, have not survived.

So in this photograph what you can see is the first visible turret from the East end of the Wall. Again, it is amazing to me that it has survived. One thing I love about the Romans - once they built something, it stayed built, unless later generations took the trouble to demolish it down to the soil.

And here's the next bit

2008-06-15T18:39:00.005+01:00

This stretch of Wall runs alongside the A69 at Denton in Newcastle; goodness knows how it managed to survive where the grass verge should be! What I love about this section of the Wall, apart from its sheer stubbornness, is that the Broad Wall measurements (8 Roman Feet) can clearly be seen here, and that here the original specifications were clearly met. This photo doesn't really do it justice - if you stand and look down the edges of the few outer blocks which have survived of the curtain wall, particularly on the outer edge by the road, you can see just what a great piece of construction it was. Straight as the proverbial arrow.

BENWELL (Condercum) - next stop along the Wall after Segedunum

2008-06-15T12:53:00.012+01:00

Strictly speaking, the next stop along Hadrian's Wall should be Pons Aelius (Newcastle) and you should certainly take a look at the Museum of Antiquities at Newcastle University, but it is currently being rehoused and will not reopen until autumn 2008. The line of the Wall continues almost invisibly through the modern city, but there are occasional treasures to be found, such as this tiny little Roman temple to a British god, Antenociticus or Anociticus (see the correction to my original entry, where I had mistakenly written that this was a Mithraeum, in the comment posted by a vigilant reader below; thanks!) at Benwell. The third fort along the Wall proper was on this site but there is nothing left of it apart from this little temple.

This place was harder to find than anywhere we've looked for so far - we roamed far and wide before we finally found it at Bloomridge Avenue, off Weidner Road, off West Road (the A186), just past the Tesco Express garage... with narry a signpost to tell you it's there.

It's right at the top of the hill in a typically British working-class suburban street, nice neat houses with gardens, though you can't see them here because my husband cropped them out of the picture! The sign for Bloomridge Avenue is NOT at the top end of the street where it joins with Weidner Road; but Bloomridge Avenue is actually the first turning on the right, just ten yards down Weidner Road. Good luck if you're attempting to find this site (the neat suburban streets are right on the edge of a very dodgy bit of Newcastle).

Hadrian Article in "The Guardian" newspaper

2008-06-10T20:34:00.005+01:00

This excellent article, featuring Thorsten Opper of the British Museum, whom I'd just met at Saturday's conference, appeared in "The Guardian" yesterday. As you will see, it tells the story of how a marble head of the Enperor Hadrian had been wrongly attached to the body of some unknown philosopher... a nice little piece of Victorian "restoration" which went spectacularly wrong. Today we'd probably call it art fraud!

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/heritage/story/0,,2284520,00.html

Hadrian's Wall Conference at Segedunum

2008-06-07T22:31:00.007+01:00

I have just come back from a fabulous one-day conference at Segedunum (Wallsend). The title of the conference was "Hadrian: Architect of the Frontiers" and it was organised by the Hadrianic Society (see link in the "Ancient History Links" list to the left). It is one of the extraordinary features of this kind of conference that the whole thing was completely free for participants. All you had to do was sign up. I have been to a couple of one-day conferences this year hosted by Durham University; one (on Nabataean culture) was free and the other (the British Epigraphic Society annual conference) was a nominal ten quid, which probably barely covered the price of the coffee and the very nice buffet lunch.

You don't have to be an expert to go to these conferences, but you have to have enthusiasm for the subject, and a bit of background reading certainly doesn't go amiss. The great thing is that almost by dint of being there, you are accepted as an equal by the experts. It's a surprisingly egalitarian world. I doubt if this would be true of economists, say, or theoretical physicists.

The cast of expert speakers at today's conference was heavywight indeed. Professor David Breeze and archaeologist Paul Bidwell are two of the greatest Hadrian's Wall scholars of their generation; Professor Tony Birley is the director of the Vindolanda Trust (his family home is on the site itself) and he comes from an entire family of North-West Roman frontier experts. I would have been very happy if just one of them had been there, but the fact that all three spoke was utterly brilliant.

There were also amazing talks by Thorsten Opper of the British Museum (he is the Curator of Greeak and Roman sculpture there), Prof. Tony Spawforth and Prof. Ian Hayes of Newcastle University, and Alexandra Croom of Tyne and Wear Museums. Everything was first-class - I nearly broke my wrist trying to write all the information down.

For me, however, the most intriguing talk was given by a man I'd never heard of, John Boulter, who was described on the programme as an "independent scholar". This in itself was enough to make him interesting, and I wasn't at all sure what to expect. He is of the same generation as Breeze and Bidwell, I believe, and is a trained engineer. He spoke in a very matter-of-fact way without PowerPoint, using OHT slides, and started by explaining the way in which the Romans surveyed roads, aqueducts, and the Wall. He has surveyed the line of Dere Street (one of the major South-North Roman routes to the Wall, with several forts along its line) and the Wall itself. From his observations, he is convinced that the design of the Wall is essentially South rather than North-facing, with the main function of the milecastles and turrets on the Wall being signalling to the forts in the hinterland rather than simply observing the North. Very interesting, and I have got a copy of his article in the "Arbeia Journal Vol 8 (2005) so that I can read it to see if I can understand more of this theory. He was also kind enough to give us a handout with a Bibliography.

It is inspiring to see that you don't have to be an academic to do publishable research - empowering, even!

ARBEIA (South Shields)

2008-06-01T22:38:00.006+01:00

Just South East of Wallsend on the South bank of the mouth of the River Tyne is the Roman fort of Arbeia (South Shields). It is not on the line of the Wall itself; in fact, it predates it. Like most early Roman forts, it had an aggressive rather than a defensive function, but after the Wall was built it became a supply fort for the troops along its line. This meant that many of the buildings inside the fort were granaries. The present-day site is not large, but it has some good visible remains (including these well-preserved latrines! - picture on the left) and very clear outlines of the buildings inside the fort. There are also some fun reconstructions. I could argue with the reconstructed barrack-blocks - the shape is fine but the building feels flimsy and the frescoes look as if they were painted by schoolkids - but the gatehouse is excellent; very solid; and you are allowed to climb up inside it. Great stuff.

Archaeology is a messy business...

2008-05-31T22:27:00.005+01:00

Believe it or not, this is the next stretch of real Wall at Wallsend - looks like a pile of discarded rubbish, doesn't it? Basically it's still under wraps. Since my first visit to Segedunum I have learnt that this section will stay under wraps until the money can be found to excavate and preserve it properly. The length of apparently discarded pipe in the foreground is actually a working drainage pump. I'm not an archaeologist myself (we ancient historians prefer not to get our hands dirty) but I am fascinated by how the past is uncovered. Or not, as in this case.

This is the real thing...

2008-05-26T22:11:00.004+01:00

This is where the first bit of Wall proper can be seen - sandwiched between the road alongside the main Segedunum site and a housing estate, with the reconstructed segment of the Wall next to it (on the left of this picture). There's also a bit of a Victorian ruin near here of an old pit working, for those who are interested in industrial archaeology (have to confess it's not really my thing... my interest in English history stops with the Domesday Book!)

Reconstructions at Segedunum (Wallsend)

2008-05-26T21:55:00.004+01:00

Because there's so little to see above ground, some reconstructions have been made, including a complete bathhouse (see below left; the white building with the authentically-tiled roof), and this section of Wall (it's just across the road from the main site).

Begin at the Beginning... The East End of the Wall (SEGEDUNUM)

2008-05-26T21:42:00.010+01:00

Segedunum, known to most people by its modern name of Wallsend, is where Hadrian's Wall officially starts. If you are going to do a coast-to-coast walk or bike ride along the Wall from East to West, this is setting-off point for the purists. However, this part of the Wall was added almost as an afterthought, to protect the gap between the original line of the Wall and the River Tyne. How do we know this? Because the original dimensions for the Wall were planned at 10 Roman feet in width (about 3m) - the so-called Broad Wall. This was later modified to 8 Roman feet (the Narrow Wall - imaginative lot, these archaeologists, when it comes to nomenclature...). On parts of the Wall which were originally intended as Broad Wall, you can see that the lowest courses of brickwork conform to the original measurements, and the Narrow Wall is simply placed on top. This is not the case along the Wallsend stretch of the Wall: it has Narrow Wall measurements throughout. This must mean that it was added later.

There's not a huge amount to see today in terms of stonework - the site lay under the Swan Hunter shipyard until Mrs Thatcher destroyed the shipbuilding industry in the 1980s. The warehouse buildings were removed and the site fully excavated. The beauty of it is that it has one of the most complete layouts of any of the fort sites in Britain.

The site was, apparently, rather neglected for a while, then at the turn of this century National Lottery Money was used to consolidate the site and build a fabulous Visitor's Centre with an observation tower.