Hadrian’s Wall walk, August 2018
Below is a brief history of Hadrian’s Wall, which I walked back in August of 2018.
If you want to skip this section, you can find Day i here:
You can also easily navigate each part of the trip by clicking the ‘Home’ section.
When did the Romans first arrive in Britain?
Eleven years before his infamous assassination, Julius Caesar invaded the British Isles in 55BC. This was primarily to improve his own standing within the empire as he was vying for supreme power with Pompey and Crassus. His two small invasions were largely unsuccessful and achieved little except political credibility. To read more about two Caesar’s campaigns, click here: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/nov/29/caesars-invasion-of-britain-began-from-pegwell-bay-in-kent-say-archaeologistsand here http://www.historyfiles.co.uk/FeaturesBritain/PrehistoryRome_Caesar01.htm
Caesar invading Britain, ever so slightly romanticized.
A much more firm Roman foothold in Britain would not be established until Emperor Claudius launched an invasion of the island in 43 AD.
In short, it was too difficult and expensive to control the entire Island, so Emperor Domitian (81-86AD) decided to pull back and create a more defensible border. Initially, this new border was on the Gask Frontier in modern-day Scotland but it was moved further south by Emperor Trajan (97-117AD) to the east-west road that ran between the Roman settlements of Carlisle and Corbridge. It was here that Trajan built a defensive line and a number of key timber forts at Stanegate, Vindolanda, and Corbridge. Far from being a permanent position, Trajan used the border for offensive purposes from which he could launch attacks into modern day Scotland.
Hadrian
A colourized bust of Hadrian.
For obvious reasons, Publius Aelius Hadrianus (Regnal name: Imperator Caesar Publius Aelius Traianus Hadrianus Augustus), the son of Trajan, is the most important character in the formation of the wall. What set Hadrian apart from his predecessors was that while other emperors expanded the borders of the Empire, Hadrian consolidated it.
This was a dramatic break from the past as at the Roman view of its relation to the world was that of endless conquest. Historian Gearing Osborn explains it best,
“The Romans believed that it was their destiny to conquer the entire world; they did not feel that their empire should be set within boundaries. The area under Roman controls would keep expanding. This ideology is put into the mouth of Jupiter, king of the gods, by Virgil, effectively court poet tot he emperor Augusts, in his epic poem The Aeneid. Jupiter is made to say that he has set no boundaries for the Romans; that they will conquer the world and create an empire which will last forever.(Virgil, Aeneid 1.278-9).” (Osborn, 2006, 19)
Expanding the borders of the Empire also had an important political purpose as foreign conquests brought possibilities of self-aggrandizement and legitimization.
Hadrian was not directly opposed to this Imperial philosophy but he was cognizant of the Empire’s limitations. When he took power in 76 AD, Hadrian inherited an Empire that was 3000 miles long and 1750 miles wide. Such a massive landmass encompassing thousands of different peoples put considerable strain on the Empire’s bureaucracy. In order to avoid overstretching the Empire, Hadrian opted to consolidate, ushering in a reign of stability and internal prosperity. Apart from that, what have the Romans ever done for us? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7tvauOJMHo)
They also built a road network in Britain that is used to this day. This is an interesting article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/08/06/how-year-old-roads-predict-modern-day-prosperity/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.c22bc32155d3
In the words of the author William Dietrich, “Despite the superb construction of 48,500 miles of Roman roads, transportation in ancient times was extremely difficult…[as] the stirrup had not been invented, horseshoes were mostly unknown, wagons had no suspension to even out bumps and “horsepower” – horses, mules, donkeys, and oxen-had to be fed…Hadrian’s revolutionary solution was to halt the expansion that his predecessors had pushed and establish a defensive boundary. In Britain it was Hadrian’s Wall, in Germany it was a log palisade two hundred miles long between the Danube and Rhine, and in North Africa and Arabia it was a series of forts in trackless desert. Where possible, the Romans used rivers, canyons, and ridges to make their stopping point as defensive as possible. A precipitous gorge near the headwaters of the Middle East’s Euphrates River was one such barrier.”(Dietrich, 2009, 371)
The Empire in 117 AD. Hadrian would die in 138 AD, 16 years after he ordered the construction of the Wall. Note the distance of Hadrian’s wall from the Empire’s epicentre, Rome.
Hadrian’s relations with the Senate were strained from the beginning after he unlawfully put four treasonous senators to death. Hadrian’s withdrawal from his father’s territorial gains in Mesopotamia, Assyria and Armenia, and parts of Dacia reflected his foreign policy that emphasized the establishment of stable, defensible borders. This new imperial policy was exemplified by the construction of Hadrian’s Wall.
Prior to Hadrian’s arrival in Britannia, the province had suffered a major rebellion, from 119 to 121.(Birley, Restless Emperor, p. 123) When Hadrian arrived in Britain In 122AD, he ordered the reconstruction of the border his father built. In the 4th century words of Aelius Spartianus in The Augustan History, “Having completely transformed the soldiers, in Royal fashion, he made for Britain, where he set right many things and – the first to do so – drew a wall along a length of eighty miles to separate barbarians and Romans.” (Citation: http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Historia_Augusta/Hadrian/1*.html)
The Antonine Wall was built and briefly occupied by Hadrian’s Successor Antonine.
Hadrian Visiting A Romano British Pottery, 1884
A brief digression, but like much of the early history of the Wall, some historians have speculated the small possibility that, because of far eastern trade with China, Hadrian could have heard stories about the Great Wall of China, which had been built centuries earlier. This, of course is quite unlikely but the history of that contact is quite fascinating: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Roman_relations
Interestingly, the Wall hasn’t always been attributed to Emperor Hadrian. Up until relatively recently, it was known as the ‘Severus Wall,’ named after Emperor Septimius Severus. This was rectified by Reverend John Hodgson who, in 1839, published the History of Northumberland which contained a 173 page footnote (apparently the longest footnote in English literature! (I can’t confirm this)) in which he argued that it was built by Hadrian, a thesis that has gone unchallenged for the past 179 years.
A panel in Segedunum.
In the construction of the wall (122-128AD), three legions were employed (Second Augusta from Caerleon in South Whales, the Twentieth Valeria Victoria from Chester, and the Sixth Victoria from York). The construction of the wall took only six years but there was considerable variation in the design given the capacity of supply networks and local resources. As a result, the thickness of the wall varied between 6-10 feet, while its height was around 13-15 feet (based upon modern estimations).
To quote Wikipedia, because why not, I no longer am enrolled in university so I can take some academic liberties, “It had a stone base and a stone wall. There were mile-castles with two turrets in between. There was a fort about every five Roman miles. From north to south, the wall comprised a ditch, wall, military way and vallum, another ditch with adjoining mounds. It is thought the milecastles were staffed with static garrisons, whereas the forts had fighting garrisons of infantry and cavalry. In addition to the wall’s defensive military role, its gates may have been customs posts.”
“Hadrian’s Wall was 80 Roman miles or 117.5 km (73.0 mi) long; its width and height varied according to the construction materials available nearby. East of the River Irthing, the wall was made from squared stone and measured 3 metres (10 feet) wide and 5 to 6 metres (16 to 20 feet) high, while west of the river the wall was originally made from turf and measured 6 metres (20 feet) wide and 3.5 metres (11 feet) high; it was later rebuilt in stone. These dimensions do not include the wall’s ditches, berms and forts. The central section measured eight Roman feet wide (7.8 ft or 2.4 m) on a 3 m (10 ft) base. Some parts of this section of the wall survive to a height of 3 m (10 ft).
“Immediately south of the wall, a large ditch was dug, with adjoining parallel mounds, one on either side. This is known today as the Vallum, even though the word Vallum in Latin is the origin of the English word wall, and does not refer to a ditch. In many places – for example Limestone Corner – the Vallum is better preserved than the wall, which has been robbed of much of its stone.”
A short, slightly melodramatic video on its construction can be viewed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeosZImCrMY
In order to properly man the wall, 80 mile-castles were built at mile intervals that could house 32 men each. Additionally, there were 161 evenly spaced turrets/observation posts. It is estimated that it took just 2 and a half minutes to run from one post to the next. A few years after the wall was completed, it was strengthened either due to pressure from the Caledones or the Brigantes to the north. To quote historian Henry Stedman, “The character of the Wall had now changed. From a lengthy but fairly flimsy constructions whose primary purpose was a defensive lookout from which to keep an eye on the locals, the Wall now became a defensive, heavily fortified barrier; while the number of soldiers stationed on the wall went from a relatively measly 3000 to a much more intimidating 15,000 – a 500% increase in manpower. As a result, it is estimated that around 10% of the entire imperial Roman army was based in Britain, even though the island accounted for only 4% of their total territory.” (Stedman, 2017) Additionally, a massive ditch called a Vallum was constructed that was typically 6 metres (20 ft) wide and 3 metres (10 ft) deep. Much of this still survives today.
“In 2010, to commemorate the 1600th anniversary of the end of Roman rule in Britain, a series of 500 beacons were lit along the length of the wall”
After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the Wall was continually used for various purposes throughout history. For example, in the 18th century Field Marshal George Wade paved over a section to create a military road. Additionally, much of the raw materials from the wall were later used for everything from drystone walls to priories. This will be a theme throughout the trip.
Some historians maintain that invading and holding Britain was a tremendous mistake due to the fact that it was far more of an economic burden. Situated far from the beating heart of the empire, the Mediterranean, the cold, damp nature of “England’s mountains green” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XEneUZ2FW8 ) offered little except prestige for vainglorious Emperors. This Imperial trend was exemplified by Hadrian’s successor Antoninus Pius (138-61AD) who decided to push the frontier of the empire north, building the Antonine Wall in modern day Scotland only to be promptly abandoned eight years after construction (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonine_Wall#Abandonment ). As a result of the declining military importance of what was formerly Hadrian’s frontier, the character of Hadrian’s Wall changed as it began to serve more of a civilian purpose as markets developed where legionaries and auxiliaries once manned the wall. For example, the fort of Segedunum (Latin for Strong-fort) became a market town and later emerged into what is today Newcastle. This was where I started my walk.
How we view the Wall today
Much of how we imagine buildings in Antiquity or even the Middle Ages is based upon their present conditions. Movies and popular culture mirror the present state of statues and structures by portraying them in a dull greyish tone when in reality, they were immensely colourful. Take for example the famous statue of Emperor Augustus for which a polychromatic replica has been made.
I was able to see these statues in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford back in 2016. To read more, click here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustus_of_Prima_Porta#Polychromy
Similarly, Cathedrals in the Middle Ages were far more colourful than they appear today. An excellent example of this is Chartres Cathedral. (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/architecture/11310351/Cathedrals-are-bursting-with-colour-again.html and this fantastic video of Chartres Cathedral https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGAumT8aNkk) Similarly, historians speculate that the Wall was possibly whitewashed at some point based upon some lime paint that was found on a number of well preserved stones. Such an appearance would have made Hadrian’s Wall especially dramatic against the rolling English countryside.
A note on the contemporary nature of the wall
Much of what we see today is in part manufactured. To quote my itinerary, “The Wall in this section was reconstructed as a dry-stone wall in the 19th century under the instructions of John Clayton and it is known as ‘Clayton Wall’. It is said that he took great liberties with the reconstruction using non-Roman techniques – but Clayton’s enthusiasm helped preserve that central stretch of Hadrian’s Wall and the miles of ‘Clayton Wall’ snaking over the crags help us imagine what the Wall might have looked like when it was first built.”
My own photo of what is obviously a reconstructed portion of the wall. Note the variations in the mortar.
John Clayton pops up a few times. Here he is in a painting by William Bell Scott; the face of the centurion is that of John Clayton. The location is one of the most scenic parts of the walk.
Milecastle 37, perhaps best known for its gateway that would appear to have survived nearly 2000 years is in fact partly reconstructed.
Photo from the internets.
The wall is also studiously maintained to prevent the growth of weeds that would help prevent further erosion. The result is an artificial separation from the surrounding vegetation.
Photo from Wikipedia
Why was the Wall built?
The question remains, why was the wall built? The obvious answer would be that in order to properly solidify the Roman position, something would need to be done to keep the Picts (a people portrayed by the Romans as being painted blue and only first mentioned in the late third century) north of the wall.
These barbarians were much like the Blue Men Group.
In popular culture and media, the story of the Ninth Legion (Legio IX Hispana) which supposedly disappeared in Northern Britain after 120AD has been adapted to a number of novels and movies. Some historians have speculated that the loss of the legion could have led Hadrian to construct the wall, preferring not to risk any more losses. Contemporary theories suggest that the Ninth Legion continued to exist after 120AD due to archaeological evidence found in Nijmegen that suggests it or parts of it existed until the reign of emperor Septimius Severus (193-211AD) More information on the theories of the Ninth’s disappearance can be read here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legio_IX_Hispana
There are a number of interesting historiographical interpretations of the actual purpose of the wall. Much like human nature, history is far from clear-cut and rational. The knee-jerk assumption would be that it presumably was to keep out the ‘barbarians’ to the north. Such an explanation, however, fails to take into account other important factors that spurred on construction.
There is the view that the wall was meant to signify the endpoint of civilization, creating a psychological barrier between ‘them and us,’ a useful political tool for Hadrian who didn’t shy away from using it for propagandistic purposes. Others have argued that it was meant solely to control trade and migration by funnelling travellers through a number of locations.
The idea of the ‘civilizational endpoint’ was emphasized by propagandistic Roman historians such as Aelius Spartianus from the 4th Century AD. This viewpoint of the frontier of civilization has also crept into our collective unconsciousness by both recent historical precedents (such as the American frontier or demarcations within the British Empire) and popular culture. Briefly, it should also be noted that while visually impressive, the Wall did not suddenly separate Romans from Barbarians, “An official line between the Tyne and Solway rivers did not suddenly civilize those living to the south of it or make barbarians of those to the north. Roman jewellery and fine pottery associated with Roman-style dining have been found at a number of Scottish lowland sites.” (Osborn, 22)
The theory that it was to control trade leaves far more questions unanswered. While building the wall allowed for fewer numbers of auxiliaries to sufficiently man it so that others could be moved elsewhere, this alone does not justify its construction. If the sole purpose of the Wall was to control trade and human migration, then what made Trajan’s far more modest constructions insufficient for Hadrian? Furthermore, if controlling trade was all that was needed, then why did Antoninus Pius, the successor of Hadrian, build his own wall 160 kilometres to the north for reasons other than vaingloriousness? Stabilizing the frontier was no doubt important but such a monumental and expensive project would need a greater reason.
In an Empire that was dominated by a single man, that reason is far more likely to be found in his own character than in economic or migration.
More recent historiography has suggested that the wall was a vanity project by Emperor Hadrian. Roman emperors were expected to expand the borders which would also help to win over the Senate. Since Hadrian did not do this, indeed he went so far as to abandon his father’s conquest in the east, he instead put his own personal stamp upon the consolidation of the Empire. I find this to be the strongest argument as there wasn’t any sort of an existential threat north of the wall, rather, Hadrian was preoccupied with solidifying his own position within the empire and by extension, his legacy.
A good deal of what we (think we) know about Hadrian’s wall is based on speculation. Archaeological excavations have unearthed some incredible finds, most notably the Vindolanda Tablets which tell us much about daily life but frustratingly little about wider political developments: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vindolanda_tablets. Written sources are also prone to imperial chauvinism and propagandistic overtones. It could be decades until we have more conclusive answers to questions such as this one.
Much of our contemporary understanding of Hadrian’s Wall is influenced by popular culture (i.e. Game of Thrones) which is encouraged by the Hadrian’s Wall tourist industry for understandable reasons. As tempting as the narrative of the Roman Centurion guarding the wall (it was overwhelmingly auxiliaries that manned the wall, originating anywhere from Belgium to Iraq, to be accurate) where civilization abruptly ended, it simply does not hold much historical truth. I will expand upon this on my section on pop culture and politics below.
Hadrian’s Wall and Popular Culture
Hadrian’s Wall remains surprisingly pertinent in today’s popular culture. The most obvious example being the Game of Thrones book and tv series. ‘The Wall’ in the fantasy series was a clear reference to popular conceptions of Hadrian’s wall. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGcKOXk9Qbs
Fortunately, Northumbria isn’t as cold as The North.
Author George R. R. Martin once said in an interview that, “The Wall predates anything else. I can trace back the inspiration for that to 1981. I was in England visiting a friend, and as we approached the border of England and Scotland, we stopped to see Hadrian’s Wall. I stood up there and I tried to imagine what it was like to be a Roman legionary, standing on this wall, looking at these distant hills. It was a very profound feeling. For the Romans at that time, this was the end of civilization; it was the end of the world. We know that there were Scots beyond the hills, but they didn’t know that. It could have been any kind of monster. It was the sense of this barrier against dark forces – it planted something in me. But when you write fantasy, everything is bigger and more colourful, so I took the Wall and made it three times as long and 700 feet high, and made it out of ice.”
Game of Thrones is a fantastic series and it is understandable that Martin would take artistic licence. That said, his vision of Hadrian’s Wall falls into common popular culture tropes that have been strongly challenged by modern historians who point to the border area as being far more fluid, in sharp contrast to the north-south dichotomy of the barbaric and civilized.
There are countless other examples of Martin drawing from British history. The war for the Iron Throne is much like the War of the Roses. The Red Wedding is similar to the infamous St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre in 1572 where all of the Huguenot leadership was assassinated in a wave of Catholic mob violence. And finally, the Red Wedding mirrors two events in Scottish history: the Black Dinner and the Massacre of Glencoe (http://theweek.com/articles/463588/reallife-events-that-inspired-game-thrones-red-wedding )
The story of the lost Ninth Legion has come to shape much of how we think about Roman occupied Britain. A 1953 novel entitled The Eagle of the Ninth has mythologized the disappearance of the Legion while fighting against Celtic tribes in what is now Scotland. The 2011 movie The Eagle is based upon the novel while the 2010 movie Centurion roughly follows the same storyline. You can see a part of the wall and land beyond it in the trailer here (reflecting pop culture interpretations of the Roman frontier): https://youtu.be/Yx4bnwvGmKM?t=1m10s
The wall has incorrectly come to be seen by some as the present day border between England and Scotland. On its western end, it is quite close to the border but on the far eastern end of the wall, it is situated seventy kilometres to the north.
The present border became more firmly established in the 10th to 12th centuries and for some Hadrian’s Wall remained a neat division between north and south, Englishman and Scotsman. In reality, this division is far from absolute. Borderlands such as Northumbria feature a unique fusion of Scottish and English culture despite historical attempts to make it more culturally homogenous. A surviving example of this synthesis would be the Northumbrian smallpipes.
For some, the idea of the wall has come up in contemporary politics, most notably the Scottish Referendum.
This has also led to some satirical articles not so subtly referencing Trump and his wall: https://newsthump.com/2017/03/16/nicola-sturgeon-announces-plans-to-rebuild-hadrians-wall-and-england-is-going-to-pay-for-it/
This has inevitably led some to make memes out it.
Why walk Hadrian’s Wall?
Back in 2007, I took part in a choir tour of England in which I had the opportunity to sing for a week in both Durham Cathedral and Christ Church College Cathedral in Oxford. While in Durham, I took a day trip to Hadrian’s Wall, specifically Housesteads. Being interested in history, I was enamoured by the rich history contained within the two-thousand-year-old ruins (despite what the photos might suggest).
Note: This time around (11 years and 11 days later), I arrived at Housteads through the forest over my shoulder (yellow hoodie).
Note: I didn’t actually use the Roman bathhouse for its original purpose.
While we were making our way back to the bus, I heard a few people were discussing how some hike across the entire wall. The thought of doing that stuck in my head. When I returned to Toronto, I gave my father a Hadrian’s Wall mug that I had purchased in the gift shop that sported a map of the wall with the Latin names of each major fort. We talked about doing the hike one day but with school looming in September, I pushed the thought to the back of my mind. As I entered my last year of university, we began to make more concrete plans for the following summer seeing that it was the right time to go ahead with the trip.
While I never took any Classics courses at the University of Toronto, I was involved in my High School’s Classics Club where I gained an appreciation for antiquity.
Somewhere in 2013 where people still wore togas.
I completed a history specialist degree in 2018 with an emphasis on modern European history. Combined with a lifelong interest in camping and outdoor activity, hiking Hadrian’s Wall made for a perfect trip.
Day i can be found here:
Interesting further media
- A self-described ‘Hadrianophile’, ‘Following Hadrian’ is quite interesting to follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/carolemadge?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor as well as her website https://followinghadrian.com/about-me/
- This short Melvyn Bragg Podcast is superb and features a handful of eminent historians: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01kkr42
Hadrian's Wall Blog 