Because this is such a large area this section will be split into nine parts, one for each of the seven days of the trip plus an extra two for the miscellaneous forts surrounding the wall. The majority of this walk (from Newcastle to Birdoswald) was done at the same time but I've included bits from other walks in the place where they most logically fit in. This trip will only deal with the wall itself and the forts that lay upon it. There are several supply forts, closely connected to the wall, that we visited but they will be listed in parts
eight and
nine. I'll mention them when they come up but click on the link for more detail.
General Details
Hadrian's Wall runs from Bowness-on-Solway in the west to Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the east. It is empty in the middle but the ends are dominated by the cities of Carlisle and Newcastle. Both of these cities offer a good place to start and both are well stocked with accommodation and transportation, although Newcastle is superior in both. The wall itself was built by the emperor Hadrian in 122 AD after a long succession of military engagements and advances. Since at least the governorship of Agricola in the 80s northern Britain had been occupied on and off again by Roman soldiers. Several of the forts listed here were not originally designed to be on the wall but were there beforehand. Others replaced forts that were now less than practical. The wall itself had forts every five miles along with a milecastle for every Roman mile between them and two turrets between every milecastle. It was a lot of work to build such a colossal construction.
The wall remained in use until the 140s when the emperor Antoninus Pius replaced it with a new wall further north in Scotland. This
Antonine Wall was built of turf (the Latin word
vallum merely meant fortification) and was only used until it was abandoned for unknown reasons in the 160s. After this Hadrian's Wall once again became the main frontier of the Roman provinces of Britannia. The emperor Septimius Severus did briefly reoccupy the Antonine Wall defenses in the early 3rd Century, but he only remained in Britain for three years and then died. The effectiveness of the wall is uncertain since, except for a period of destruction and rebuilding in the late 2nd Century, the wall shows no evidence of damage during the major barbarian invasions. In the mid 4th Century there was an event that sources called the Barbarian Conspiracy which resulted in the destruction of southern forts but left the wall unaffected. The remainder of the century saw similar raids with no evidence of destruction from the wall. Either it was undermanned, in which case it seems odd that the forts weren't destroyed, or it was bypassed by sea, in which case it was useless. In either event the wall is presumed to be abandoned by the time the Romans left Britain in 410 although the villages that had been built up around the forts seem to have survived for longer.
The entire length of the wall was originally built in stone although now only the sections in the middle survive intact. For most of the way there is little to no evidence that the wall existed except for the occasional fort or mound of dirt. There is a Hadrian's Wall path running across the country which follows the wall when evidence of it is visible. In the cities it mostly goes along the riverbanks or wherever it is most convenient. This path is pretty easy to follow as it's marked by acorns even when the signs are of no use. It's surprisingly easy to get lost when crossing through cow fields, but recovering the path again is easy enough if you can retrace your steps. The best bits by far are the areas between Heddon-on-the-Wall and Birdoswald. Heddon is the first town to have a substantial section of the wall. Wall stones don't start becoming common until after Chesters.
We did the wall from east to west. That seems to be the direction that most people take since the best areas are to be found in the eastern and central sections. This way you can make sure you experience the good sections even if you don't finish the trail. There is something to be said for following the crowd since the buses, hostels, and tour guides are designed around it. On the other hand the wind takes a decidedly easterly direction. If you're coming from Newcastle you're bound to get all the wind in your face as soon as you get towards the midlands. This is made much worse when there is rain since even a small amount can be colossally annoying when blown directly into your face. It also gets on your lens which is why many of these pictures are taken facing east even though we went the other way. I had to clean my lens after each shot and it got raindrops on it anyway. And if there is one thing that can be guaranteed in England it's that it will rain sooner or later. The northern area around the wall is particularly bad. So if you go make sure that you bring a raincoat and if you're coming from the east prepare to have it blown in your face. Mud is also a problem as it can really slow you down. We were doing less than a mile an hour through some sections. The last problem is going to hit you no matter which direction you go, but I find that it's best to avoid problems that I don't need to have. If you're certain you're walking the whole trail I'd start in the west. That way you save the nice scenery for the end too.
Arbeia (South Shields)
Arbeia is one of the supply forts and is actually located to the east of the wall. Strangely, this was the only fort we actually visited on our first day. We got distracted in
Monkwearmouth and Jarrow and didn't have time for everything. The other two I saw when I returned to Newcastle for my bus back.
We arrived in Newcastle on the previous day and stayed in the Euro Hostel. It's a nice place and they have decent food, even though the service can be staggeringly slow. We waited for almost two hours and the place was hardly crowded. As I mentioned previously we spent most of our time in monasteries. My traveling companion is a medievalist and she was more excited to see where Bede lived and worked than the boring old rocks and ruins of the Roman sites. I was interested in it too, and the metro service in Newcastle is excellent. But unfortunately we only had so much time in a day. Most sites are open 10-5 which only leaves about an hour a site when travel and meals are factored in.
Segedunum (Wallsend)
Segedunum is the first fort on the wall. This is where the wall started
(or ended depending on your point of view) and this is where my trip ended despite beginning about five miles away. Segedunum is an excellent example of how much you can do with nothing if you have the money. This fort was built in the middle of what is now a city. The ruins of it have been built over time and again. If it had been in the quiet countryside somewhere then nobody would ever visit. It is however, right in Wallsend within easy metro distance of Newcastle. So instead of accepting defeat they make the most of what they have and turn it into something special. The outline of the walls leave little impression in the ground as far as tourists are concerned, therefore the curators have marked the buildings out using different colored rocks. They line them up along the course the walls would have taken allowing visitors to see where everything stood. There are several buildings where there are still material remains above ground and these have been left alone, but mostly everything you see here is just modern rocks formed into rows. The best thing about Segedunum takes advantage of this differentiation. From inside the museum you can go up six stories and look out of a viewing platform (see pic above) for a bird's eye view the ruins. This is a unique opportunity that cannot be had anywhere else on the trail.
From here you can see the basic outline of the fort. Since this is the first fort on the wall and has such a unique perspective available I'm going to outline here the various types of buildings and their uses. Roman forts were fairly standard so all of the forts contain most or all of these buildings in some place or another. For the sake of convenience I have included a map below, but you should be able to see everything I'm talking about from the above picture.
Every Roman fort contained five basic buildings. You'll be seeing a lot of these on the rest of the trail and it would be too tiring to repeat the information every time so a basic description with pictures will follow. Segedunum is a fairly standard fort so anything seen here can be recognized in the others.
On the left side of the picture or the bottom of the diagram there is the south gates. Every Roman fort had four gates, which we label by the direction in which they face, but the Romans named them by their function. The main street was the
via principalis which can be seen in the diagram running between the gates on the left and right of the image. The gates on either end of the road were the
Porta Principalis Dextra (main right gate) and
Porta Principalis Sinistra (main left gate), their name depending on the location of the
praetorium. The
praetorium faced the main gate (the
Porta Praetoria) which was located where the most action was expected. In this case it is unsurprisingly located on the north side of the wall, meaning that facing it the left gate is to the west and the right gate to the east. Segedunum is unusual in that it has two left gates. The main left gates open on the northern side of the wall since that's where troops are most likely to be needed in a hurry, but they also needed a door for people traveling behind the wall so there's a smaller gate below it called the
Porta Quintana Sinistra. Opposite the
porta praetoria is the gate pictured here, the
Porta Decumana. This is the rear gate and the road between here and the
porta praetoria is called the
Via Praetoria. Between them the two roads divide the fort into four quarters which leads scholars to refer to them as playing card shaped. I'll generally be referring to these gates by their English names, (so north south, east and west) but the Latin names may come up sometimes when dealing with issues of orientation. If you look at the gate you'll notice that it has two large buildings on either side with two small platforms in the center. This shape is distinctive and hard to mistake for anything else. The two buildings on the side are the towers and the section in the middle separated the two doors. Most forts on the wall have two doors, but the traffic must have been smaller than they anticipated since most of them have one door blocked off within a relatively short period of time.
Directly above the south gates are the Cavalry Barracks. These are the four long buildings on either side of the
via praetoria. The infantry barracks are located on the northern side of the fort under what is now a major road. But this is definitely a cavalry barracks. You can tell by the depressions there to hold horse piss, something that soldiers rarely need. The horses are stabled on the closer side while the cavalrymen themselves are in the rooms on the opposite side of the building. Most of the forts have cavalry detachments despite the Roman reliance on infantry, which makes sense when you consider that the soldiers would have to do a lot of scouting beyond the frontier.
The
Praetorium (Commanding Officer's House) is the largest building in the fort and reflects the high importance that the Romans placed on their commanders. It's located just north and to the east of the cavalry barracks. This is where the man running the fort (the
praetor) lived and worked. These houses were often very comfortable and there are some on the wall which feature heated floors and private bathhouses. The commander wasn't the only person occupying this house since he would maintain his wife and family here along with all of his slaves.
The
Principia (Headquarters) is located just west of the
praetorium and is where all the staff officers worked. This was the heart of the fort and was where most of the day to day work and organization was done. When soldiers came in through the main gate this building was directly in their path so the commander could reward/rebuke them as appropriate. To the north of this principia is a rather unusual forehall. Nobody seems to be sure exactly what it is, but it seems to be designed to keep the rain off of people when they're gathering in large groups. The two contending theories seem to be either for drills or religious ceremonies. Of course, there's nothing that says they can't be for both.
To the west of the
principia are the Granaries (
Horrea). These are the most important buildings in a fort since they are what keeps the soldiers alive. Without supplies the Romans would be unable to withstand a siege or lead a campaign. You can't really see it here, but the granaries' floors are raised about a foot off the ground. This keeps the moisture from rotting the food, a vital problem in the British climate.
Just to the west of the granary is the Hospital (
Valetudinarium). Unsurprisingly this is for treating sick people. The size of the hospitals seem to vary from fort to fort. Housesteads has a particularly big hospital proportional to its size while this one is fairly small. I don't know if that means they expected more injuries and illness in the midlands or what.
The Reconstructed Bathhouse
One of the nicer features of Segedunum is a reconstructed bathhouse partially based off of the one in Chesters. It's a very well recreation, both inside and out. They only open it once every hour so you may have to wait to get in.
The Changing Room (
Apodyterium) was where the Romans changed, as in changed out of. Baths were naked. Behind me there are alcoves for them to store their clothes while they bath. The door in the center there leads to the latrines. On the various tables around there are typical Roman equipment and games.
The Latrines are exactly what you'd expect except that behind me there is an entirely modern bathroom with working plumbing. Ergonomically though, I do have to wonder how well these worked. Those holes just don't look big enough for what they need to do. I suppose they keep people from falling in, but they must have gotten just filthy. That bucket in the center is presumably where they kept their sponges. Instead of toilet paper they passed one of those around.
This is the Hot Dry Room (
Laconium). It is a hot and dry room. Stop me if I'm getting too technical. The section of the floor here is open so that you can see how it was constructed. The entire floor is raised up on bricks with empty space in between so that the room can be heated through the floor. This is located on the left down a hall from the changing room.
The Cold Room (
Frigidarium) features a really horrible series of fish paintings and a terrifying goddess in a niche. These recreations always seem to fail on the artistic front since they can never get actual artists interested in doing them. The bright area in the alcove is the cold bath. This room is on the other side of the hall from the hot dry room.
The Warm Room (
Tepidarium) is located at the end of the hall leading from the changing room. It is very nicely colored but seems quite empty. There's no bath in here or anything.
The Hot Room (
Caldarium) is at the very end of the complex. The bright alcove contains the hot bath. It may have been hot for the Romans but ironically this entire area was chilly and damp. It felt very drafty.
The fountain in the Hot Room is very nice.
Museum
The Segedunum Museum is excellent inasmuch as it is designed primarily for children. It features a number of reconstructions to keep them from losing interest, which is fine by me since I want to see those reconstructions too. The main room features the entrance to the fort. I don't know why there's only one gate. Outside the entrance is a good deal about Wallsend during the industrial revolution. I wasn't paying much attention. If you want information on the industrial revolution then try a different blog. I have no interest in seeing the remains of smelting holes, etc.
The second room is dressed up like the
principia, with the standards propped up against the wall. This is something like what legionaries would have seen after returning to base from a campaign or patrol. The center of this room features an excellent model of the
principia in its prime as well as digital displays.
In the back room there is a reconstruction of a cavalry barrack. How do I know it's a cavalry barracks? There's a horse next door. Also, one of the beds has a saddle on it. The layout of the room does rather suffer by having one of the walls missing, but you can see something of how it might have looked.
This is a reconstructed section of wall located just down the road from Segedunum next to an industrial revolution smelting pit (*yawn*). I think that the wooden pegs in front represent the spiked pits that often preceded Roman fortifications. The stones in the ground are a segment of actual wall, the first on the trail considering that it begins only a few hundred yards away. The reconstruction itself is an excellent reminder that the real wall was not just under eye level and would have actually appeared quite impressive, especially if painted white as some scholars believe. Walking the trail it's quite easy to forget how intimidating this was supposed to be. I wouldn't want to be approaching Britain from this side.
If you're lazy like me then you can just take the metro around Newcastle. You can get an all day ticket for less than £5 that goes all the way to Sunderland and back. Once you get to Wallsend station you start seeing signs like this for any Romans who happen to be traveling with you. I think it's a nice touch.
Pons Aelius (Newcastle-upon-Tyne)
Pons Aelius (basically means the Hadrian Bridge) was the second fort on the wall. There's nothing left of it, although construction workers in the '30s uncovered parts of the bridge when they were building a new one. The fort was built on the site of what is now Castle Garth, right in the center of Newcastle. It's only a ten minute walk from here to the train station. There isn't much here to see (not much Roman at any rate) but it's not too far out of the way to travel and then you get to say you've been to all the forts instead of just skipping some.
Day's Journey
No comments:
Post a Comment