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100 Things I've Photographed #006: The Edge of Empire
Another post of the What I Did On My Summer Holidays variety. Here's Hadrian's Wall, or what's left of it:
This picture was taken at a place called Birdoswald, which is up somewhere northeast of Carlisle, not far from the border between Cumbria and Northumbria. There's a modest sort of visitor's centre there, in what was once a fortified farmhouse built as a precaution against the Border Reivers who raided and rustled in the that part of the world a few hundred years ago. The farmhouse, like most of the other old, stone-built constructions in the area (including parts of Carlisle Castle), is built of, well, of Hadrian's Wall. You know, if those Romans were careless enough to leave big piles of ready-cut building stone just lying about the countryside, every Tom, Dick and Harry (or indeed Oswald) who came after them was only going to make use of it...
Which explains why it isn't exactly a towering fortification any more. Apparently, it was once much higher. Not that it was really like that - it wasn't so much a defensive line held by plucky legionaries against hordes of savage, blue-painted natives, as a frontier crossing, a row of checkpoints, a way of regulating trade and ensuring merchants and the like paid their taxes when they were importing/exporting goods to and from the Empire. I mean, there was undoubtedly some fighting to be done sometimes, but for quite a long time, the land north of the wall was part of the Empire too, with a second line known as the Antonine Wall up in Scotland to mark the full extent of Roman control.
Two things that struck me when we were walking along what is, I am informed, the longest surviving stretch of the wall: First, how well the Romans sited it - hard to see in the photo, but the wall itself is running along the crest of a sort of ridge, with the land dropping away on both sides so that you can see anybody coming, from any direction, long before you get to you. You know, almost like those Romans knew a thing or two about that kind of thing... ;) The other is how isolated and empty the land is there - I mean, even on a small crowded island like the one I live on there are still places where you're miles away from anywhere (apart from the carpark and the visitor's centre and all the other bloody stupid tourists who've come out to wander along a two thousand year old wall with the wind whipping across thanks to the aforementioned careful geographical siting - but you know what I mean). And you can only imagine what it was like for those Romans - I say "Romans", but for much of its history the wall was garrisoned by auxiliary troops from Dalmatia, what is now Croatia, and after they'd been stationed there for a few decades they were probably more or less indistinguishable from the native Britons - so far away from home in what was then literally the ends of the earth as far as anybody in the Roman world knew.
Except, again, it wasn't really like that. When the wall was fully garrisoned, that part of what is now northern England was probably more heavily populated than it has ever been since - there were literally thousands of soldiers stationed in forts at regular intervals, men with families in many instances, or at any rate "camp followers". And around the forts makeshift towns grew up, full of people hoping to sell things (anything you can think of) to the soldiery. And when the soldiers themselves retired, they were settling down there as farmers and so forth and then their sons were joining up to replace them. And they were all cutting down trees for building and firewood, not to mention the traders continually crossing the border via the guarded routes the forts provided. So, perhaps ironically, the country there is probably wilder and lonelier now than it was in Roman times.
But then again, I'm just a townie who wouldn't know genuinely "wild and lonely" if it bit him.
The remains of Birdoswald fort are nearby - you have to pay to get access to it, but you can sort of see it from the next field if you're financially embarrassed. It was home to quite a sizeable population of soldiers and their supporting civilians, and has been occupied ever since by Anglo-Saxons, Normans, and now English Heritage, making one use of the site or another. The fort itself is now just a big square of dressed stone, a bit like the wall in the photo above, but forming an enclosure, and you can see where the gates used to be and where the buildings within used to stand. The thing is, now it's all overgrown with grass and there are sheep wandering in and out and around it, quite happily eating and staring unsettlingly at the tourists. And I don't know, I can't help thinking there's some sort of moral in there, "look upon my works ye mighty and despair", kind of thing.
Anyway, that's enough about that. ;)
This picture was taken at a place called Birdoswald, which is up somewhere northeast of Carlisle, not far from the border between Cumbria and Northumbria. There's a modest sort of visitor's centre there, in what was once a fortified farmhouse built as a precaution against the Border Reivers who raided and rustled in the that part of the world a few hundred years ago. The farmhouse, like most of the other old, stone-built constructions in the area (including parts of Carlisle Castle), is built of, well, of Hadrian's Wall. You know, if those Romans were careless enough to leave big piles of ready-cut building stone just lying about the countryside, every Tom, Dick and Harry (or indeed Oswald) who came after them was only going to make use of it...
Which explains why it isn't exactly a towering fortification any more. Apparently, it was once much higher. Not that it was really like that - it wasn't so much a defensive line held by plucky legionaries against hordes of savage, blue-painted natives, as a frontier crossing, a row of checkpoints, a way of regulating trade and ensuring merchants and the like paid their taxes when they were importing/exporting goods to and from the Empire. I mean, there was undoubtedly some fighting to be done sometimes, but for quite a long time, the land north of the wall was part of the Empire too, with a second line known as the Antonine Wall up in Scotland to mark the full extent of Roman control.
Two things that struck me when we were walking along what is, I am informed, the longest surviving stretch of the wall: First, how well the Romans sited it - hard to see in the photo, but the wall itself is running along the crest of a sort of ridge, with the land dropping away on both sides so that you can see anybody coming, from any direction, long before you get to you. You know, almost like those Romans knew a thing or two about that kind of thing... ;) The other is how isolated and empty the land is there - I mean, even on a small crowded island like the one I live on there are still places where you're miles away from anywhere (apart from the carpark and the visitor's centre and all the other bloody stupid tourists who've come out to wander along a two thousand year old wall with the wind whipping across thanks to the aforementioned careful geographical siting - but you know what I mean). And you can only imagine what it was like for those Romans - I say "Romans", but for much of its history the wall was garrisoned by auxiliary troops from Dalmatia, what is now Croatia, and after they'd been stationed there for a few decades they were probably more or less indistinguishable from the native Britons - so far away from home in what was then literally the ends of the earth as far as anybody in the Roman world knew.
Except, again, it wasn't really like that. When the wall was fully garrisoned, that part of what is now northern England was probably more heavily populated than it has ever been since - there were literally thousands of soldiers stationed in forts at regular intervals, men with families in many instances, or at any rate "camp followers". And around the forts makeshift towns grew up, full of people hoping to sell things (anything you can think of) to the soldiery. And when the soldiers themselves retired, they were settling down there as farmers and so forth and then their sons were joining up to replace them. And they were all cutting down trees for building and firewood, not to mention the traders continually crossing the border via the guarded routes the forts provided. So, perhaps ironically, the country there is probably wilder and lonelier now than it was in Roman times.
But then again, I'm just a townie who wouldn't know genuinely "wild and lonely" if it bit him.
The remains of Birdoswald fort are nearby - you have to pay to get access to it, but you can sort of see it from the next field if you're financially embarrassed. It was home to quite a sizeable population of soldiers and their supporting civilians, and has been occupied ever since by Anglo-Saxons, Normans, and now English Heritage, making one use of the site or another. The fort itself is now just a big square of dressed stone, a bit like the wall in the photo above, but forming an enclosure, and you can see where the gates used to be and where the buildings within used to stand. The thing is, now it's all overgrown with grass and there are sheep wandering in and out and around it, quite happily eating and staring unsettlingly at the tourists. And I don't know, I can't help thinking there's some sort of moral in there, "look upon my works ye mighty and despair", kind of thing.
Anyway, that's enough about that. ;)