Hadrian's Wall
- UNESCO World Heritage
Interesting facts
- Around 15,000 soldiers from three legions, helped by men of the Roman fleet, built most of the wall in about six years.
- Only about three-fifths of the wall was first built in stone; the western stretch from Milecastle 49 to Bowness-on-Solway was originally made of turf.
- The turf section was about 6 m wide at its base and stood around 3.66 m high, built from cut turf blocks.
- The stone wall was planned to be 10 Roman feet thick, but builders narrowed it to about 8 feet partway through construction.
- When fully manned the frontier held around 10,000 soldiers, yet each milecastle was run by a garrison of just 12 to 20 men.
- There is some evidence that the wall was originally covered in plaster and then whitewashed.
- A 2nd-century enamelled souvenir pan found in Staffordshire bears the words VALI AELI, probably the wall's Roman name, after Hadrian's family name Aelius.
- In the 18th century long stretches were broken up to build General Wade's military road after the Jacobite rising of 1745.
- The famous lone tree at Sycamore Gap, just east of Milecastle 39, was felled in an act of vandalism in 2023.
- The wall inspired the giant ice Wall in George R. R. Martin's fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire.
Why it is worth it
Hadrian's Wall crosses the whole width of northern England, from Wallsend on the River Tyne in the east to Bowness-on-Solway on the Solway Firth in the west — 80 Roman miles, or about 117 km. The Emperor Hadrian ordered it built in AD 122 to mark the northern edge of the province of Britannia. It was far more than a wall: a line of large forts, each home to hundreds of soldiers, with small fortlets called milecastles every Roman mile and watchtowers between them, a ditch to the north, and to the south a great earthwork known as the Vallum. It is the largest Roman archaeological site in Britain and has been a World Heritage Site since 1987.
Over the centuries most of the stone was taken away to build roads, farms and churches, and nowhere does the wall stand at its full height. But along the central section it climbs and dips along the Whin Sill, a ridge of volcanic rock with natural cliffs, and here the surviving masonry runs across open moorland in one of the most memorable Roman sights in Europe. The best stretches owe much to John Clayton, a nineteenth-century landowner who bought up land around the wall to protect it and dug at the forts himself.
Several forts along the line have been excavated and can be visited, including Chesters and Housesteads, with the fort and town of Vindolanda just to the south, where famous wooden writing tablets have given a rare glimpse of everyday life on the frontier. Although the wall is often loosely thought of as the border with Scotland, it lies entirely within England and has never marked that border. Its sister, the turf-built Antonine Wall further north in Scotland, briefly replaced it in the AD 140s before the Romans pulled back to Hadrian's line.
Getting there
The Hadrian's Wall Path follows the wall for most of its length, and the A69 and B6318 roads run alongside it between Newcastle upon Tyne and Carlisle. The eastern end is at Wallsend, in Newcastle; the town of Consett lies about 35 km away. Newcastle International Airport (NCL) is about 39 km away.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Hadrian's Wall is a former defensive fortification of the Roman province of Britannia, begun in AD 122 in the reign of the Emperor Hadrian. Running from Wallsend on the River Tyne in the east to Bowness-on-Solway in the west of what is now northern England, it was a stone wall with large ditches in front and behind, stretching across the whole width of the island. Soldiers were garrisoned along the line of the wall in large forts, smaller milecastles, and intervening turrets. In addition to the wall's defensive military role, its gates may have been customs posts.
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