One of the great mysteries is how the ancient Romans turned, in fifteen centuries or so into the modern Italians. Flair, style and an individualistic streak behind the wheel of a car (or chariot). These are not attributes that spring to mind for a Roman centurion. Methodical…tenacious…bloody minded? Now you’re talking.

The Romans were nothing if not systematic. The proof of this is Hadrian’s Wall. The plan said “a mile-castle every 1600 paces.” No matter that mile XXXIX is perched over a precipice, or mile LXII is in a particularly boggy spot. Shift the site one hundred paces to the left? Not on your Nellium. Ironically, this “blueprint mentality” is a huge bonus for us today. The parts of Hadrian’s wall that are constructed in practical locations, with mile castles and forts linking conveniently with arterial transport routes, are now several metres underneath Newcastle and Carlisle. But up on the heights of the Pennines, where even now farming is a challenge, well preserved lengths of wall complete with forts and fortlets stretch for miles across the rugged landscape.

Squitty little Brits

There are many large Roman sites dotted along the South side of the wall, (only the “Brittunculi”, or “squitty little Brits” were on the North side). Three of the best sites are in the middle section near Hexham: Vindolanda, Corbridge and Housesteads. Housesteads is a stone-built legionary fortress so solidly built that in the sixteenth century a family of cattle rustlers called the Armstrongs set up their base in the still massive ruins of the Roman commander’s HQ. The Roman no-deviation-from-plan approach is well illustrated at Housesteads. The Wall didn’t exactly line up with a large stone watch tower at the South West corner of the fort. No question of a gentle kink in the Wall. The watch tower was demolished and rebuilt fifteen feet away.

Corbridge was the supply base and granary for the army based on the wall, and before the wall was built was the important base of operations of the Roman general Agricola, who first took Roman arms into the Highlands of Scotland. (Like many soldiers from South of the border who followed in his footsteps, he didn’t manage to hang on to what he had invaded). Like Housesteads, Corbridge has an excellent museum which is a must if visiting the extensive ruins.

I simply MUST have some new shoes

Perhaps the most amazing site not as big as Corbridge or Housesteads and is in fact strictly not part of the Wall complex at all. Vindolanda was a fort occupied by a cohort of Batavians, from what we call the Netherlands, starting in about 100 A.D. Being tidy-minded, the inhabitants of the fort threw out used notepads, worn out shoes and all their other detritus into communal rubbish pits. 1900 years later, archaeologists found and could still read thousands of handwritten Roman documents, something normally only possible with papyri from the deserts of Egypt, because of the special anaerobic soil conditions. Oh, and they also found a lot of leather shoes.

The Vindolanda writing tablets include what are clearly draft letters as well as ones that were definitely sent, as they originate from another named location. We have a long draft letter from a native merchant to the Governor of Britain complaining that he had been beaten up by the soldiers “like a common criminal”. Was the actual letter ever sent? Did the Governor down in London really care?

Another letter, which almost certainly was sent. is from Claudia Severa, the wife of a senior officer, to Sulpicia Lepidina, the wife of the legionary commander inviting her to a birthday party. The main part of the letter is written by a scribe, but the post-script is by the lady herself, one of the only definite examples of a female handwritten document to have survived from Roman times.

Elephantus albus

Tantalisingly, the letters all stop around 115 A.D. i.e. before work on the Wall had started. Maybe somewhere in the peat there is a cache of letters written by the team of soldiers who built the last section of the Wall. Maybe we could find out the Latin for “White Elephant”. Undoubtedly, Hadrian’s Wall was obsolete almost from the date it was completed, and was abandoned when another much simpler wall was built 100 miles further north. Perhaps its deterrent effect worked. Whatever the reason, Hadrian’s Wall is an awe-inspiring and still imposing structure rivalling anything built in Britain in historical time.  

Details of the writing tablets can be seen at Vindolanda, but good photographs of several hundred can be seen at www.vindolanda.csad.ox.ac.uk, (with English translations for the few of us who can’t read provincial Latin cursive with half the words missing). A good visit to these three sites including a walk along the adjacent sections of wall takes at least two days. Remember to take full adverse weather gear and wear proper walking boots, which are helpful at the sites as well as a must on the Wall.