Hadrian's Wall

Listen for a moment. Wind moves through the rough grass, a curlew calls somewhere over the fields, and sheep tear at the turf. Under your feet the ground rises and falls in long, soft ridges. Some of those ridges are not natural at all. They are the shapes of ditches, banks and buried stone, left by soldiers almost nineteen centuries ago. You are standing on the line of Hadrian's Wall, the northern edge of the Roman Empire.

The Wall takes its name from the Emperor Hadrian, who ruled Rome in the early second century. Work began around AD 122, soon after his visit to Britain. The barrier ran from coast to coast, about seventy-three miles in the old measure, or close to 120 kilometres. In the east it started near the River Tyne, at a place still called Wallsend. In the west it ended here in Cumbria, on the shores of the Solway Firth.

Here is the first surprise for many visitors. Hadrian's Wall is not the border between England and Scotland. That border runs further north for most of its length. The Wall was a Roman frontier, not a modern one. Hadrian's empire was huge, and his policy was to strengthen its edges rather than push them outward. A line across the narrowest part of northern Britain gave Rome a way to watch, control and tax movement across the frontier.

Now for a second surprise, and it matters especially in Cumbria. In the western part of the Wall, the first barrier was not made of stone at all. West of the River Irthing, the Romans first built a wall of turf. They cut blocks of earth and grass and stacked them into a thick, solid bank. Only later was this section rebuilt in stone. So the green ridges you see in parts of Cumbria may carry the story of two different walls.

The design followed a careful rhythm. Roughly every Roman mile, a small fortlet called a milecastle guarded a gateway through the Wall. A Roman mile was a little shorter than a modern mile. Between each pair of milecastles stood two turrets, small towers for watching the land. Larger forts sat along the line, each holding hundreds of soldiers. Think of it as a chain — small links, regular gaps, and strong anchors at intervals.

The Wall was only one part of the system. To the north, a deep ditch made any approach harder. To the south ran a broad earthwork that archaeologists call the Vallum. It is a wide ditch with banks of soil on each side. It seems to have marked a military zone behind the Wall. In many places the Vallum is easier to see than the Wall itself. Look for a long, flat-bottomed hollow running parallel across the fields.

Who stood guard here? Not, for the most part, Italians. The garrisons were mostly auxiliary units, soldiers recruited from many provinces of the empire. At Birdoswald, one of the best-preserved forts in Cumbria, inscriptions name a cohort of soldiers from Dacia. Dacia covered land that is now part of Romania. Imagine men from the far side of Europe, standing on a wet Cumbrian ridge, watching the same hills you can see today.

Birdoswald sits on a high plateau above a loop of the River Irthing. The fort's stone walls and gateways can still be traced on the ground. Nearby, a long stretch of the Wall survives at good height. Close by, at Willowford, the Wall once crossed the Irthing on a bridge. The river has shifted its course since then. Today the stone remains of the bridge abutment stand on dry land, some distance from the water.

The Wall did not stay finished for long. Under Hadrian's successor, Antoninus Pius, the army moved north into what is now Scotland. There they built a new barrier of turf, called the Antonine Wall. Within a generation, that northern line was given up. The soldiers came back to Hadrian's Wall. The frontier here was then held, repaired and adapted, on and off, until Roman rule in Britain ended in the early fifth century.

After the Romans left, the Wall slowly became something else — a quarry. For centuries, local people took its neatly cut stones. They used them for farmhouses, field walls, barns and churches. Lanercost Priory, a medieval monastery not far from Birdoswald, was built partly with stone taken from the Roman line. So if you walk through the villages of this valley, look closely at older buildings. Some of those squared, grey blocks may once have been part of the Wall.

This is why the Wall looks so different along its length. In some places it stands several courses high. In others it has vanished completely, and only a bump in a field or a line of road marks where it ran. Towards the western end, near Carlisle and out along the Solway, very little stone is visible. The Romans called Carlisle Luguvalium, and it was an important base behind the frontier long before the Wall was built.

Today the Wall is part of a World Heritage Site called the Frontiers of the Roman Empire. A long-distance walking trail, the Hadrian's Wall Path, follows the line from coast to coast. Walkers come in every season, and the weather can change fast here. One minute the hills glow in sunlight. The next, low cloud rolls in from the west. This landscape asks for patience, good boots, and respect for the fragile turf.

Before you move on, look around once more. Find the line of the Wall, or the hollow of the Vallum, and follow it with your eyes towards the horizon. Notice how it chooses the high ground. Notice how far you can see. A Roman soldier stood somewhere near here and looked out at the same shapes of land. The stone has mostly gone. But the line remains — quiet, patient, written into the fields.