Posted on 01/09/2019 9:32:39 AM PST by fishtank
The northern frontier of a mighty empire that once covered the known world. For around three centuries, Hadrian’s Wall was a vibrant, multi-cultured frontier sprawling almost 80 miles coast-to-coast. Built by a force of 15,000 men in under six years, it’s as astounding today for its sheer vision as it is for its engineering. Milecastles, barracks, ramparts and forts punctuate a diverse landscape that provides a dramatic backdrop.
(Excerpt) Read more at hadrianswallcountry.co.uk ...
I visited the other end at Walltown, near Carlisle. Less than 10 feet high through most of the part we saw. I want to get into some kind of shape that’s not “round” and hike the length. I love Northern England.
Decades ago while driving from Carlisle to Haltwhistle just after dawn started to lift the fog, I suddenly came upon a stretch of the wall beside which a dozen or so men dressed as Roman soldiers were marching.
I think that it was a historical re-enactor group but for a moment I thought that I had driven back in time. England, Scotland and Wales have so much worth seeing. My four years there were not nearly enough to see it all.
There is a town called Walls End in England along the borders, and according to my guidebook a remaining few stones are in the park there as it is where the wall ends. While driving, we asked a few locals where Walls End Park was, they didn’t know that was how the town got its name, or exactly where in the park this piece of the wall might be. We found it...just a few stones left of it. There are large parts of the wall still intact marking the border between Scotland and England, built by Roman Empire Hadrian who vanquished England but couldn’t quite get a handle on them varmint Scots, so he built the wall. I’m a naturalized American (legally, too) but have dual nationality as a Scot, too. Shucks, I can never be President coz’ I’m a dual national.
>>Two weeks with Britrail combing England, Scotland and Wales. No agenda. No schedule. I’ll decide where to go when I get up that morning.<<
That is, by far, the best way to travel for the purpose of sightseeing. My wife and I have traveled all over Europe and North America with only a general idea of where we intended to go, but no timetable and no advance reservations. We would fly to any airport, rent a nice car, and hit the road. That was during our thirties through our sixties. Now we’re in our seventies and no longer have the stamina or the steady nerves to go it alone, so instead we do Globus and Cosmos coach tours and big-boat cruises, not like winging it but still highly enjoyable.
So he came south with his harem of catamites, and his Stuart dynasty plunged my ancestors into three civil wars in 150 years, until they finally ran James II out of town in 1688.
But the tradition he established, of paying Scotland's debts with England's money, continues to this day. Perhaps when the Old Country cuts itself free of Europe, it will follow through by cutting itself free of Scotland.
"and nought shall make us rue / if England to herself do rest but true."
Buy the “O[pen to View” pass (it cost $40 when I went years ago) and you can go through all the castles, open country historical homes, historical sites, for free for one month after they date stamp it at the first site you view. Absolutely a bargain. It comes with a guidebook listing the hundreds of places you get to view so you can eyeball the book and see if it is somewhere you want to go.You can also purchase a eu-rail (sp) pass where you can hop off and on trains throughout Britain for free for an amount of time you deem needed. These must be purchased beforehand. We only were there three weeks, so I passed on my open to view pass to an American couple we passed on the street before we left.
If you can visit go! Which border towns? Mine are from the border as well. Came down from Cathiness by joining the British army.
It wasn’t exactly an “act of history”...a delicate way of avoiding the word murder. Queen Elizabeth authorized cutting off the Scottish Queen Mary’s head, but since Good Queen Bess couldn’t be married off because of some womanly difficultes...lots of surmising why Lizzie didn’t get married off to foreign Kings as politically she would have been quite a catch, her cousin, Queen Mary, whom she had decapitated, had a son who united the two kingdoms of Scotland and England finally under one crown. Maybe Scotland and England will be dis-united once again as many Scots would like to see happen. We live in interesting times.
he son who inherited the crown, and Scotland and England were then united.
he had some “womanly” difficulties could neither marry nor bear children, her cousin Queen Mary’s child, became King and united the two countries.
Dumfriesshire County, as best we can tell. Around the Lockerbie area. Pretty much everyone with my surname can trace their roots back to there.
Like many Scots, my forebears emigrated to the new world due to the clearances and abject poverty.
Caithness
Ping
“... a reason for the location of Hadrian’s Wall was partly due to a geological fault zone that resulted in a natural stone facing several meters high and unscaleable in several places.”
Yes, according to what I’ve seen or read. The Romans were not dumb, and surveyed carefully to choose the route for the wall that would give them the maximum elevation in the area.
Also, from documentaries I’ve seen:
* Apart from its semi-practical use (it wouldn’t stop invaders), it was also simply a “make-work” project. Hadrian was a firm believer that idle soldiers were trouble. If it wasn’t the wall, it would have been something equally fascinating they would have been assigned to build, just to keep them busy.
* It was more for funneling people through the gates, to collect taxes, than for being a military bulwark.
* Hadrian was a hands-on kind of emperor. He came to inspect the work. He decided the wall needed to be wider than it was. All of the wall that had been built so far had to be widened — and this did not just mean adding width to what was standing, it meant widening the foundations themselves. What a pain!
* Then the Antoinine Wall was built by a later emperor, farther north, rendering Hadrian’s wall irrelevant.
* Then the Romans abandoned England and Scotland altogether, and the soldiers tossed their rolled-up letter scrolls into trash heaps, wells, and fire pits. Wisely, archaeologists did not try to unroll them until technology advanced enough for them to use X-rays and UV light to read them, before the unrolling destroyed the fragile documents. They give amazing insights into the kinds of things soldiers would write home about, and the kinds of letters they would receive in turn. Yes, there are things written home like “send more underwear”! Real, human stuff.
* The archaeologists also have come up with literally more than a million discarded shoes. The soldiers went through a lot of shoes. I wish they’d put some of those shoes up on eBay.
“Hadrian was a firm believer that idle soldiers were trouble.” And that tradition/belief has continued on through the ages and is the reason why you may have heard stories from your father or grandfather about having to paint the rocks lining the walkways in front of the orderly room and/or barracks.
“And that . . . is the reason why you may have heard stories from your father or grandfather about having to paint the rocks lining the walkways in front of the orderly room and/or barracks.”
Ha!
I stopped in at Birdoswald Fort, an outpost along Hadrian’s wall, years ago when I was in Northern England. It had a good visitor’s center and we spent several hours touring the excavations and walking the wall. What remains of the wall today isn’t that impressive but it was much more formidable in it’s day. After the Romans left Britannia the technical skills like building with stone left with them so the wall was gradually dismantled and the stones used by the locals for building material. We toured Lanercost Priory near Birdoswald and they pointed out how some of the stones that built the church were originally from the wall. Stone buildings all over the north of England were constructed with stones originally milled as part of Hadrian’s wall.
Actually this is a popular misconception. The Wall is not and has never been the border between Scotland and England - it's entirely within England and the Scottish border is many miles to the north, especially at the eastern end (at the time the wall was built, the Scots were still in Ireland and the English were in Angeln).
Glad you liked it there, though, it's a wonderful part of the country:-)
#22 ...after dawn started to lift the fog
Nope, you were seeing real Roman troops that had stepped out of the Twilight Zone.
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