Emperor HADRIAN'S WALL...

"Just when you think you are at the world's end, you see smoke rising from East to West as far as the eye can turn, and then under it, also as far as the eye can stretch, houses,temples, shops and theatres, barracks and granaries, trickling along like dice behind....one, long, low, rising and falling, and hiding and showing line of towers... that is the wall. " (Rudyard Kipling -`Puck of Pook's Hill')

I am lucky enough to live about an hour's drive from Hadrian's Wall, much of which is still standing, as are the remains of the forts and barracks along its' length. Today was a beautiful day to get the open top out and drive along the old Roman 'Military Road' and visit some of the old garrisons and parts of the wall which goes over magnifient Northumberland scenary. Of course, during the Empire, England and Scotland did not exist, the areas were very tribal and a military posting to the Wall was an Operational Tour of duty.

When the Roman Emperor Hadrian visited Britain in 122 A.D he recognised the difficulties in establishing control in Caledonia and saw that it would be impossible to introduce the Picts to the Roman way of life. The Emperor therefore ordered the construction of a great defensive wall which would mark the northern limits of his empire and consolidate the hold on those parts of Britain already subdued. Hadrian's empire would not include Caledonia.

Hadrian's Wall was eighty miles long, six metres high, three metres wide and built of stone, (though the Cumbrian sections were originally built of turf). Its defences were supplemented by a northern DITCH, a MILITARY ROAD and an earthwork called the `VALLUM' . Together these features formed a `MILITARY ZONE' which restricted the movement of people to the north and south of the wall. This military zone was a `No Go' area for armed `Barbarians'.

The defences of the Military Zone were supplemented by MILECASTLES which housed garrisons of up to sixty men. These were built at intervals of one Roman mile and between each of these stood two smaller defensive towers called TURRETS which held small garrisons of four men.

Most important of the military garrrisons along the wall were of course the great FORTS, of which there were sixteen, each housing between five hundred and one thousand men. The men who occupied these forts and the other Wall defences were sometimes recruited locally, but more often than not they were brought in from some distant corner of the Roman Empire.

Soldiers garrisoned on the wall, thus came from as far away as Spain, Switzerland, Hungary, Germania, Romania and even North Africa. Surprisingly very few of the Roman soldiers originated from Rome or Italy. Instead the wall was a Multi-National Military Zone whose people had brought with them many different customs, languages and religions.