The Ancients - Hadrian's Wall

Episode Date: May 25, 2024

It's the most famous Roman frontier in the world. A massive c.13-foot high wall that spanned the length of northern Britain, dividing the empire between Roman and 'barbarian' land. But how was it built? Who lived along it? And why was it named after Emperor Hadrian?In this episode of The Ancients, Tristan Hughes is joined by Dr. Frances McIntosh to tell the story of this iconic monument of Roman Britain and explore the forts, milecastles and turrets that made it far more than just a wall. Along the way they'll discover how Hadrian's Wall fit into the wider Roman frontier and how it has helped countless authors when creating fictional worlds (yes George R.R. Martin we're looking at you...).This episode was produced and edited by Joseph Knight. Senior Producer was Anne-Marie Luff.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code ANCIENTS - sign up here.You can take part in our listener survey here.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's the most famous Roman frontier in the world. A massive wall that crossed Northern Britain, dividing the empire from what the Romans considered the land of barbarians beyond. It's the ancients on History Hit.

I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and in today's episode we are talking all about Hadrian's Wall, the most popular Roman site in Britain. Why was it built? How was it organised? Who lived along this frontier? And what did this wall actually consist of. Hint, there's much more to this story than just the wall itself. That is all to come, plus much, much more, because our guest today is Dr Frances McIntosh. Frances, she is collections curator for Hadrian's Wall and the North East of England with English Heritage. I know Frances well because we did a documentary series on the

wall a few years back. That series is now free to watch on YouTube on the History Hit channel, so do go and check that out after you've listened to this episode. I really do hope you enjoy, and here's Francis. Francis, it is wonderful to see you again. Welcome to the podcast. Oh, thanks for having me. Yeah. Hadrian's Wall overall is a site. I know it includes so many different sites to make it up, but surely this is the most iconic Roman site in the whole of Britain. Well, I think so. I mean, I'm sure it's a very subjective view, but it's 73 miles long. It was occupied for more than 300 years. You can see

swathes of the wall and the associated buildings, and you can visit lots of museums with the objects in. So I think overall, it's pretty good. How much archaeology do we have surviving from Hadrian's Wall? So what you can see today of the physical wall, so just that line, only about 7% of the line of the wall is visible. About 92% of it is buried in various forms, whether that's under a road or under a big mound in a grassy field. And we think maybe about 1% overall has been destroyed. So it's not too bad. But although 92% of it it is buried some of those bits that are buried have been excavated so we do we have looked at more than just the 7% and every time you excavate on Hadrian's Wall and you know as you'll remember from visiting the museums we find objects that

tell us all about the people of the past and there's 11 museums all along Hadrian's Wall that tell you about different aspects of life there. So, a huge amount of evidence and information for people to learn about life on the wall. And with that 7% that you can see, if my memory serves me right, I mean, it's quite concentrated in a particular area of Hadrian's Wall, isn't it? It always is. Quite a lot of it is in the centre of it, not really on the edges. Yeah, that's right. So, on the eastern end, that's a very urban setting. That's Newcastle, Wall's End, that big Tyneside Sprawl. So there's not very much visible there because it's, you know, buried underground or only survives at foundation level. You can see a few little bits as you leave the A1 and get onto the A69, which is always a bit, I think, unexpected for people. But

the more famous sections, you know, if you imagine a picture of Hadrian's Wall, they're in what we call the central sector. So, approximately in the middle of that 73-mile line starts really at Chester's Fort and runs all the way through to Bird Oswald Fort. At Bird Oswald Fort, we say that that's the place where you can see everything. So, you go and see a fort and then you have just over a mile line where you get to see all the different features of the wall exposed and interpreted so the more famous views are perhaps on the crags over near house deads but you're right it's in that central section and then you know in the west again um there's the urban center of carlisle but also the wall hasn't survived as well because a stone that was used in the western section because they're using the stone that's local has decayed a lot more so it hasn't survived in such an upstanding kind of way as the central sector has.

And you mentioned names like Carlisle and Newcastle there so no such thing as a silly question when we ask kind of where Hadrian's Wall is so we should really be imagining this is well right near the border but this is northern England. Yeah so it runs in the east from Wall's End, which is the east coast. People know of Jarrow, you know, the big shipbuilding areas. It goes through Newcastle, through Northumberland, passes through Carlisle, and then ends at Bowness on Solway on the west coast. It's the Tyne-Solway-Izma, that's called. It's like the little narrow neck of Britain, if you look at a map. So, you know, the Romans weren't silly. They picked that narrowest spot in order to draw their line.

Well, let's delve first into the origins of Hadrian's Wall because it doesn't start at the beginning of Roman Britain. So, Frances, talk us through the story of Roman Britain up to when Hadrian's Wall becomes a reality. What is that story? So, in 43 AD, the Romans land, possibly at Richborough, another fascinating site cared for by English heritage, and their aim is to conquer the whole island. Then Aegis is going to take it all over. It's not quite that easy. It takes them a lot longer than they thought it might. The people living in what the Romans called Britannia weren't necessarily happy about this invading army.

You know, lots of people have heard of the Budokan Revolt in 60 AD where Colchester and London are torched. There's a lot of problems, particularly in Wales. And the Romans keep, you know, incrementally moving out from their landing point at Richborough North and West. And they actually get up to the sort of area where hayden's wall is now in the 70s ad but they're not stopping there they continue further because they want to take the whole island it doesn't work partly kind of logistics and you know the way that the local tribes are maybe fighting doesn't work with the roman army kind of set piece battle but also there's pressures elsewhere in the empire which might mean the attention can't be always focused. So yeah, the Romans have been in the area of where Hadrian's Wall is for about 50 years before Hadrian's Wall was built.

And so what do we know about this landscape? So before Hadrian's Wall is built, what should we be imagining across this area of Northumberland and Cumbria today? Was there a sparse selection of Roman nodes, Roman settlements, or was this all kind of largely territories divided up between these various Iron Age British peoples? So what I always kind of say to people is if you go into the central sector of Hadrian's Wall, where it's still very rural, you know, the Tyne Valley is a really rich agricultural area, a lot of the line of Hadrian's Wall would have been like that. It would have looked very rural with farms, small-scale settlement. There were forts that the Roman soldiers had kind of set up.

So there's an earlier line that we now call the Staying Gate. That's a medieval name that runs a very similar sort of line, but it goes from Corbridge to Carlisle, so it's a bit shorter in the wall. And that had forts all along it. There weren't necessarily the kind of towns that we might have seen further down south in Britain, but those forts would have had civilian settlements outside them, similar to how we see on Hadrian's Wall. But much of the area would have been rural. And in areas where they have been able to excavate under the foundations of Hadrian's Wall, they found evidence

of plough marks. So it's a fairly dispersed settlement. This area is approximately, falls into the Brigantian territory. Britain is not a unified country before the Romans arrive. There's many, many different territories controlled by different tribal groups or powers, some of whom get on with each other, some of whom don't, some of whom are happy to welcome the Romans, some of whom aren't. And that's one of the ways that the Romans can, you know, occupy because they don't necessarily have to conquer every region because some tribes are happy to, you know, allow them in. But in the north of England, so kind of the Bergantian tribe, it was not always a happy kind of coalition. And

particularly up in what we now call Scotland, Scotland didn't exist lots of the tribes up there very much did not just let the Romans turn up and you know set up camp. So that's the situation at that time as you say perhaps these unruly local Britons and the Roman presence as you say they've only been there for a few decades so it's still very very early on in the story of Roman Britain. So we get to the early second century Francis and around I mean I've got the date 122. You can let me know if I'm an approximate there. But who is the figure who comes along? And then what's the story about the building of, well, you kind of give the name away, don't you, with the name of the building today, but the building of his namesake wall?

Yes. So when Emperor Hadrian comes to power, he comes to power in 117 AD, he takes over from Emperor Trajan. Trajan and all the other emperors before him very much had a policy of expansion, make the empire bigger, get new territories, get the wealth that comes with that, get the human workforce that comes with that, whether for the army or other things. But when Hadrian comes to power in 117, he has a complete change of policy and he's very much seen as a consolidated emperor. he has a complete change of policy and he's very much seen as a consolidator emperor so he actually returns some territory that has been worn in Parthia modern-day Syria and Dacia which is modern-day Romania he visits Germany or Germania and sets the line there for the edge of

the empire there and that's called the Limes in Germany and that's a wooden palisade. And then he comes to Britain in 122. And the Historia Augusta, which is a third century source that gives the stories of lots of emperors, says that he constructed a wall, you know, and that's what we pin the date to. Whether or not he'd sent the instructions before he came, so he could see progress, or whether he turned up and said, right, let's build it. And then they started. But we go with 122 for the beginning of the construction of Hayden's Wall. And we actually celebrated the birthday in 2022. So we had to settle down some academics. You can't say it's definitely 122, but we needed a date for our celebration. So yeah, so he comes and says to build a wall,

the source says he was the first to construct a wall, which was to separate the barbarians from the Romans. Now, that's literally the only line we have in any of the sources about who built the wall and why and when. But the Romans very much saw the people outside of their empire as other, and they call them barbarians. However, it's not quite as simple as that, because even when Hadrian's Wall was built, the Romans were going north of the wall quite regularly and had outpost forts there, but it's their line in the sand. With the original wall that's built, what materials are we thinking of? Because initially in our mind, we think of a massive barrier made completely out of stone. But from what I remember, the first version of it, it's not completely stone, is it?

No. So, the wall is 73 modern miles or 80 Roman miles because they have different measuring system. It's that long. But the section west of the River Earthing, approximately around near Bird Oswald in Cumbria, all the way to Bowness on Solway, that's about 30 miles, that's built in turf initially, whereas the other 50 miles are built in stone. And that's about 30 miles, that's built in turf initially, whereas the other 50 miles are built in stone. And that's probably just due to access to resources, perhaps even time restrictions. So, you know, the Roman army really could have got whatever materials it needed. You know, they're a powerful force. Logistically, they're well set up, but they maybe thought turf would be okay because they

didn't have the time to get the stone but sometimes in the 130s so only about 10 years after construction they did turn that other 30 mile section into stone and the construction is pretty similar all the way along even with the new section that they built and it's got a good base foundation it has facing stones nicely shaped faces the outside, and then a rubble core filled with mortar. And then the wall is mortared or pointed, maybe as people might think of, and potentially it was lime washed as well. So it's really impressive construction. And where was the stone quarried from to build this massive wall? Can we see the remains, like Roman quarries nearby Hadrian's Wall today? wall. Can we see the remains, let's say, of Roman quarries nearby Hadrian's Wall today?

Yeah, absolutely. So the quarries were as close as possible to the building site as it can be, because then as now, transport costs are a huge burden to any sort of infrastructure project. One of the most famous quarries is probably the Ritten Rock of Gelt over in Cumbria. If listeners want to just pop that into Google or other search engines, you'll find some really interesting kind of articles about all the graffiti that they found on there. And that's how we know that the quarries are Roman, because the Romans left their mark. There's probably a lot more Roman quarries that have then since been quarried after and the Roman evidence is gone. So Kathleen O'Donnell, who fairly recently completed a PhD in Edinburgh, looked at all the potential sources for quarries all along Hadrian's Wall and showed that there's large numbers. If you stand at Halstead's Fort and look south, you look down the hill and then there's a few kind of rises above you and there's loads of lumps and bumps and dips in there.

They're all small quarries where stone's taken because you're going to take it from the closest possible point. And if you're having to find almost two and a half thousand tons of stone and clay per 100 meters to build the wall, which is what the calculations are, the closer it is, that's saving a huge amount of time and money, isn't it? Absolutely. And it also begs the question, if you've got this massive logistics operation ongoing to build this monumental frontier, unlike anything the Romans had built before it appears, who are the people who are building it? Should we be imagining just lots and lots of slaves or is it different people? The main workforce are actually the three legions, the soldiers who are based in Britain.

So there's the second legion from Kellyanne Wales, the 6th from York and the 20th from Chester. They come up to build the wall. Now each Legion's 5,000 men. It's unlikely that 100% of each Legion came up because that would leave their fortresses completely unoccupied, but it would be a large chunk. And that's because within the legions, there would be trained stonemasons, architects, surveyors, people who've got the skills to do this, as well as then just having the pure grunt power to move all that material. But it is likely that other units of soldiers might have helped. Perhaps they paid local labourers.

Perhaps they used slave labour. But the large bulk of it is built by the three legions. And we know that because they marked their bits of the wall. So they wrote their names on bits that they've done. And these are what we call centurial stones. So a Roman legion is split into centuries, a group of 80 men. And from the centurial stones, we understand that each century was given a section to build. And then they would write their name on a stone that's built into the wall. They haven't bought a new stone. They've just written, you you know the century of louis suavis

built this section or so and so and so and it's probably partly pride in their work but it's maybe also to say look we have built this bit this is what we were supposed to do and we've done it you know maybe saying we've done it better than the century next to us or that side and they're a great source of information for some of the people who are building the wall that's a bit of competition and actually kind of keeping on that if we're looking at the surviving parts of the wall and looking in detail at the stones that survive should we not therefore be imagining just barren stone all along the front can we see carvings can we see little patterns and stuff etched into the wall by the people who built it. Yeah, so there are some, you know, some of the most famous and perhaps most popular are the

phallic images that are carved in and they're on the wall, but also on different forts. And the phallic image didn't have the same meaning it does today. It was very much a symbol of good luck and of strength. And so it's very associated with the military. And that section of wall that I mentioned where you can walk from Bird Oswald, that's got two or three within a mile. So it's the best section to kind of go and see them. But you do have to look closely because obviously, if they're on upstanding bits of wall, they are slowly, unfortunately, getting weathered because they're exposed. But the centurion stones are a little bit more official, I think, whereas those carvings of graffiti and other things that are found are maybe the soldiers just on a break, you know, doodling.

I want to keep a bit more on the wall itself before we go on to the other features of the wall, because Hadrian's wall is so much more than just the wall. But Frances, I want to ask a couple of the million dollar questions at the moment from the surviving archaeology. The first one, it seems like a simple question, but it's not a simple question. How tall do archaeologists think the wall was and how wide do they think it was? how tall do archaeologists think the wall was and how wide do they think it was? So the wall, to our best knowledge, because there's very few or no surviving sections, you know, fully complete, which says this is the top. But we think around about four and a half metres and there's a section at wall's end which had fallen over. It wasn't fully complete, but that gave us the best guess. And when they first started construction, they were aiming for three metres wide.

But when plans changed, which happened quite a lot during the construction, which, you know, I think anyone who works in a big construction project can tell you, they moved to two and a half or 2.4 metres wide. The turf section, that section we talked about in the west, that was six metres wide. So that's perhaps because they maybe thought it wasn't quite as secure as a stone wall, so they add the width. But it's an absolutely huge undertaking to construct something that big and that long. Because if we don't have any of the wall surviving in its full height, I mean, sadly, does that mean that there have been a lot of questions about what was on top of the wall?

The big question, was there a walkway? Should we be imagining this was a wall which Roman soldiers could walk along the top of and look over into what they defined as barbaric and beyond? Oh, yes. Now, if anyone's been to a castle, you'll see they've got walkways on the top, haven't they, and parapets and things. And a lot of those are narrower than Hadrian's Wall was. So, if I had to bet, I would say there would be a walkway. Why would there not be? Because otherwise, you're hugely restricting the kind of visibility and security aspects of that wall because you can't look over it. However, there is no evidence that we definitely had a walkway or that it was crenellated. So, English Heritage manages

and cares for a lot of free sites along Hadrian's Wall, which are just little sections of the wall or turrets or mile castles. And if people visit multiple of them, they'll notice that the reconstruction drawings are different on each one of them because we've gone with, we don't know. So we've given people different options of how it could have been. And we've tried to say, you know, we don't have all the answers because we would need to find a large stretch of the wall in existence to its full height with all the details to be able to say if it had crenellations or if it had a walkway. But for my bet, I would say walkway. I don't think we can say either way about crenellations, but probably it had another section of the wall to protect whoever's walking along it.

And crenellations maybe make sense because then you can look out, but you're protected behind the higher bit. I think it does make sense, doesn't it, when you think of the purpose of defence and looking out beyond? I mean, well, let's say, for the sake of argument, as you say, we don't know for certain, but there is a walkway and you're a Roman soldier and you are looking out in front of the wall, you're looking north. It's not just green and fields and hills beyond. I mean, initially in front of Hadrian's wall, what did the Romans also construct to make it even more formidable? So north of the wall, there's a huge ditch and then what we call a berm on the other side. So all the soil that you've dug out of the ditch is built up to create a big bank and the ditch is eight meters wide and three meters deep. It's V-shaped so it would be a huge obstacle for anyone trying to attack from the north. Also at some places,

not all along the wall, are these pits which are called kippy pits, so C-I-P-P-I, and they've been found with evidence of stakes in them so if they don't have stakes in the muscles they can just be an ankle breaker so they fall over but if they've got the stakes it's the added ouch factor and they're found a few points along Hadrian's Wall so it's a huge defense and you've got to think although the wall itself is only 2.4 meters wide the kind of wall frontier zone in the military area is much bigger than that. Because if you think about an eight metre wide ditch, the bank is similar to that in the north. And then you've got also material and things going on to the south of the wall. Well, let's go behind the wall.

How far back do you think does the whole militarised zone of Hadrian's Wall stretch? So, quite far. To the south is a really big mystery. So normally you'd think to the south that's inside the empire that's safe you might have a little area that is just for the soldiers you know maybe to allow the military road to come through but what you actually have is the wall and then a section of flat ground and then you have a huge ditch with two mounds one on either side and that two mounds and the ditch is 35 meters wide.

And that runs, again, the entire length, these 73 miles of the wall. So building the Valum or digging the Valum, because it's all just dug out of the earth, we reckon would have been at least as much work as constructing the wall itself. So some people said, well, why would you need that? Because that's a bit overkill, isn't it? You know, fair enough, you might want to mark out a bit of a military zone, but supposedly everyone to the south is friendly. Supposedly, you know, they're part of your empire. I'm very happy about that. I mean, the Valum suggests not, but equally, it does seem a little bit overkill. So when some people say, oh, the Valum was just a, you know, a keep busy job,

that also seems a little bit much, but I don't think we people say, oh, the Valum was just a keep busy job, that also seems a little bit much, but I don't think we'll ever know. And the Valum is another one of those, you'll never get the two sides to agree, or the six sides, because there's so many different views about what the Valum could be. But could it potentially suggest, as you've hinted at there, as you say, we can't know for sure, but Hadrian's Wall is not built just to look north, to look beyond the supposed borders. Is it also built to kind of project southwards too? Just kind of a statement to the local peoples that, look, we've built this massive monument because we can. We have the ability and the power to. You should kind of get in line almost. We definitely can't discount that.

I mean, before the Romans arrive, there's very little building of stone. The communities are very small scale in number. And so, can you imagine the impact that having 15,000 men coming up to set up camp to build this wall and the fact that this wall is being built? And as I said, when they've looked under the wall, they found evidence of plough marks. I'm pretty certain that some people who owned land, half their fields are on one side of the wall and the other half are north of the wall. And I'm pretty certain there's no compensation scheme like you get when HS2 goes through or the motorway. So the disruption and the fact that Romans are going to say, we're doing this, we can do this, here we are, this is our statement.

Yeah, there's so many kind of levels, I think, to the purpose of Hadrian's Wall and then how it, you know, acted for its nearly 300-year occupation. let's talk about some of these features in the wall itself francis and let's start small and go big first off the turrets now what are these, these are very small square structures, and there are two of these every Roman mile. They're around about 20 feet square. We think two stories. They're built as sections of the wall. So, the north wall of the turret is Hadrian's Wall. And we think they maybe hosted six to eight men. They're watchtowers, so to say. So, it's a way to post men along the wall and keep an eye on things. So, that's part of the plan. There's the line of the wall with these two turrets, two in each mile, and then every mile is a mile castle. So, the Romans didn't call these

turrets and mile castles, but that's what we do because it's sensible and every mile is a mile castle which is measures about 50 by 60 kind of roman feet and that would maybe hold 32 men but probably never quite that many and so the plan of the war was to spread men out along that eight mile line to monitor survey surveil the activity and what's happening and you know that's again a huge undertaking because you add that level of construction on top of the height of the wall and the Romans are quite known I think aren't they for their regularity many people would say and so every mile castle had to be every mile and every tour it was pretty much a third of a mile in between and some of them are on what we would now say really silly locations because you go in and they're at a 45 degree angle on the ground.

So it would have been tricky to live in there. But that's where they were positioned because that's what they were told to do. And with these mile castles, we should just imagine these are slightly bigger than the turrets. They can house more people between them. And we need to imagine them kind of riding up and down the length of the wall behind these turrets and mile castles, relaying orders and so on and so forth, watching for enemies. That's right. And something that's a key difference between the milecastles and the turrets is the turrets don't allow you to cross the wall. All your activity would be south of the wall, as you said. But in the milecastles, every milecastle, so that's 81, have a gate through

the wall. So one thought is the mile castles, as well as being slightly larger, holding more men than the turrets, they're a way for people, whether that's the Roman army or locals or traders, to be able to go through the wall either way. And we know movement was allowed through the wall, but the Romans are now controlling that, aren't they? If you're living north of the wall and you want to come and trade some cows or sell glass bangles or whatever it is that you're selling, or you want to go and visit previously your neighbour who's now south of the wall, you've got to pass through the military control of that mile castle. And so, the mile castle is a real indicator of that control that the Romans are bringing to the landscape.

It's fascinating. I mean, picking one example and also picking up on the point you made earlier, Francis, in how they've built every Roman mile and no matter what the landscape looks like, the Romans adjust it to make it a place that they can build their mile castle. I remember going to Poultrous Burn. I think that feels like the iconic example, isn't it? Mile castle 48. And it's like a 45 degree slope. There's a train line right by nowadays. But you can see the outline of the houses too. You can see the whole outline of this very regular styled milecastle. It's incredibly impressive engineering how they kind of use the landscape to their advantage there. Yeah. So, you know, Poultross Burn, presumably they would have had to terrace within the milecastle to make that a livable space. We

know at Halstead's Fort, which visitors will know is also on a slope, they did have to terrace to make it usable. So they knew how to kind of work the landscape, even if sometimes you think, surely you'd just put it in a different place. But obviously, if it had a purpose in that specific place, which you know, Halsteads did, and the mile castles did, you have to work with what you got. We mentioned Halsteads there. So this is the next level up, isn't it? We've done the turrets, we've done the fortlets. What's this next level of military bastions that you have on Hadrian's Wall? So these are forts. And before I tell you too much about what a fort is, although I think most

people will probably be able to guess, it's a military installation, it's where soldiers lived. I wanted to just say the original plan for Hadrian's Wall, as it was written down in 122, if you think that, was the line of the wall with the milecastle every mile and two turrets in between and no forts. They would use the forts that were already occupied on that previous kind of approximate boundary, which we now call the staying gate. At some point, somebody changed their mind, whether it's Hadrian or somebody else within his administration. And they decide, no, we need forts on the wall. We need to have soldiers, more soldiers based on the wall.

And so plans were changed and they worked out that the forts would go approximately every seven and a quarter miles or so. And if someone, so those poor legions, had started building a mile castle or a turret. That would get knocked down because a fort was going there. So you can imagine the frustration, I think, for these soldiers who are, you know, slogging hard away in obviously the beautiful weather that we have in the north. Just to be told, the wall you spent two weeks building, that now needs to be knocked down because we're changing our plans. And you can see that. So at Hausage, you can see part of the wall of a turret that had to be knocked down because of the change of plans

you can't see it at Chester's but we have excavated and we know there's a turret under there so these forts come in it's because obviously they've had a change and thought about the military kind of needs and having the turrets in the Mark Castle doesn't provide enough soldiers I think if they are actually under attack whereas these forts that are added in to the wall, they can hold between 500 and 1,000 men depending on the fort. So that adds a huge number of fighting bodies to the wall and makes it a lot more kind of defendable, I suppose. The forts are possibly what people know a bit more about the war. And that's where you often visit, you know, as a visitor site is a fort. But they weren't part of the plan.

And I always like to just think about the poor soldiers cursing the higher-ups who've changed the plan after their wasted effort. I mean, also, just before we kind of explore more about the fort itself, and we'll focus particularly on Halsted's because we've both been there in the past together. in the past together. But does that explain why, if there were already forts in this area, and then they build more forts on Hadrian's Wall, why we have arguably the richest concentration of well-preserved, well-surviving Roman forts in Britain along that area? Because yes, we think of places along the wall, but then my mind immediately thinks of places like Vindolanda or Epiarcum, or maybe even Hardknot in the Lake District. You know, they're amazingly well preserved for British standards, at least. Stone forts in Northern England and not just on the line of Hadrian's Wall.

No, I think what you've got to think about is Hadrian's Wall is part of a much larger frontier zone. And that's kind of how academics, you know, we talk about it. Hadrian's Wall isn't in isolation. And much of what we now see as kind of Yorkshire, Cumbria, that is just for most of the period of Roman Britain, is a military zone. It's densest at Hadrian's Wall, but all the forts, so Hard Knot and Epiarcom and on the east side, Piercebridge and and Binchester, and Ebchester, they're all part of that kind of network of supply of soldiers or communication, as you talk about, supply of, you know, resources. There's forts north of the wall, the outpost forts like High Rochester. So yeah, it's not just the wall, it's much more. And I think it's because,

you know, it took a lot of effort to hold that part of Britain. Well, absolutely. One of the richest, if not the biggest concentrations of military forces in the whole of the Roman Empire, hence why so many of these later emperors use all the soldiers from Britain because they've got so many to try and stake their own claim for the emperorship and so on and so forth. I mean, going back to the forts quickly, and we can focus in on house states, but you mentioned earlier how the Romans are very regular. So what did a Roman fort on Hadrian's Wall, what did it usually consist of, do we think? So it would have exactly the same things that you would find in a fort in Spain or North Africa or Turkey or France, because as you say, they liked a formula. Now,

a Roman fort is a playing card shape. In the centre would be the headquarters and the commanding officer's building. So the two most important, both at the heart of the fort, symbolically and physically. And the headquarters would be where all the administration took place, where orders would be given, where the pay was kept, importantly. And the commanding officer's house, just what it says on the tin, it's a very big house for the very big man in the fort. And then every fort would have a couple of granaries. And granaries are not just to store grain, they're to store all sorts of dried foodstuffs. And again, they're all built the same.

At house edge, you can see really nicely the columns of the raised floor, which meant that there was lots of air circulation to get rid of damp, keep it away from pests. And then the vast majority of the rest of the interior of a fort would be barracks. Because if you think of a fort, and that's got to hold between five and a thousand men, even though they are quite cramped, it's still quite a lot of space. And then you might have some storerooms at house steds. There's a probable hospital, which is really exciting. That's not very common. You'd have the bathhouse, which is a really key thing for women soldiers to be outside of the fort, because that's not seen as important in a kind of siege situation. But you'd also have places for

them to relieve themselves. So at house, there's one of our famous things, and perhaps one of the most fun bits for the school children is our toilets. Now, at Halsteads, they're in the southeast corner, so they're making use of the gravity. So, the rainwater would be collected and channeled down to fill the water tanks. And the Romans at Halsteads had flushing toilets pretty much because they would have running water constantly taking away their leavings. It flows out into the Sphylian settlement outside the fort, which is, yeah, not that pleasant. But then again, probably really good manure. And that's, you know, a key thing. Every fort along Hadrian's Wall, same across the empire, was not in isolation. Outside of that fort is a civilian settlement

that builds up. And geophysical survey at places, particularly at Bird Ozzel where it is kind of the most comprehensive and it showed up best you know that civilian settlement could be bigger than the fort and that's people a lot of them are linked to the army perhaps their relatives illegal wives until the third century but also it's traders who are coming because the soldiers are paid but don't really have anywhere to go. So if you set up as a tavern, a laundry, a baker's, maybe a brothel, selling pots, et cetera, you've got a ready market there. These soldiers are paid and want to be able to spend their money. And so these civilian settlements are a real key part. And again, a real change. There's not settlements of that sort of scale really in North of Britain

before the army comes in because the way of life was very different. It was focused around smaller groups, community, farming, not quite subsistence level, but it wasn't the urban living that the Romans bring to the north. These forts, these places along Hadrian's Wall, it's not just the domain of military men. There are women, there are children, there are slaves, there are traders, there are businessmen and women, people from all across the empire who have come here for one reason or another and are making a living there. Yeah, absolutely.

So you can go very far on either end of the spectrum. You know, you can say Hadrian's Wall is terrible. It's a military occupation. You know, the Romans came in and controlled everything. And, you know, the Romans did do and controlled everything. And, you know, the Romans did do bad things. And I'm sure lots of people never liked them for their whole lives, you know, generation after generation. But equally, lots of people profited from the Romans arriving. You know, you can think about these traders, some of them might have been local,

but some of them could have come up from Gaul, you know, France or Germany or up from Southern Britain following the army and that ready market. And, you know, people adapted their lives to, you know, survive and even prosper by using the army in that way. And also, let's just use one example because the figure of Baratis comes up time and time again. And also this Britain, Regina, if I'm correct too. I mean, what's this particular story? Because this seems a great example to kind of highlight, you know, people from all parts

of the empire almost. Yeah. So, you know, the soldiers on Hadrian's Wall are from all over the empire, you know, from Syria, France, Spain, Germany, etc. Barates was a Syrian. He was from Palmyra. And he was either a standard bearer in the army or a flag seller. There's debates on the language. was either a standard bearer in the army or a flag seller. There's debates on the language. And he married a girl from Southeast England, Regina, who was originally his slave.

So problematic, you know, Klaxon. She presumably had been sold into slavery when the tribe had been subdued by the Romans. And she died when Barates and her were at South Shields Fort. So South Shields is not on the line of Hadrian's Wall, but very much part of the frontier system. It's a big supply base, wasn't it, for getting all the supplies along Hadrian's Wall on the time? That's right. Hugely important. There they've got 16 granaries rather than the normal two that forts have. And Barates was obviously very wealthy because the tombstone to Regina is just stunning. It depicts her reclining on a couch and he's written the inscription to her in both Latin and Palmyrene.

And they really demonstrate, you know, the multicultural nature of life in Britain, but particularly on Hadrian's Wall. He's come from, you know, the other end of the known world, I suppose, to the Romans to end up at Hadrian's Wall. He's come from the other end of the known world, I suppose, to the Romans to end up at Hadrian's Wall. There is also a tombstone to someone called Barates at Corbridge, Romantown. Whether or not it is the Barates, we don't know. The coincidence is obviously maybe too good to ignore. But what we don't know, unfortunately, we don't know enough about Palmyrene culture. We don't know if Baratis is the equivalent of John or if it's a really unusual name. So yeah, but it's nice to think that it could have been him because it means they both at least have ended their lives in the same place, approximately. So it's just kind of melting pots of different cultures from all

across the Roman Empire along Hadrian's Wall. It's extraordinary. And one other thing I'd like to focus on there is, as we kind of move on to evolution and wrapping up the episode, is also about religion along the length of the wall. If we've got these people, as you mentioned, these soldiers, you've got some from Spain, you've got some from Germany, you've got Syria, you've got France, ancient Gaul. Do we then also see this kind of melting pot of different religious practices occurring for these people stationed and living along the length of the wall? practices occurring for these people stationed and living along the length of the wall? Yeah, absolutely. So, we've got kind of three types of deities, I suppose, that might be worshipped on Hadrian's Wall. So, the people who lived in Britain before the Romans arrived obviously had their own deities. We know a lot less about them because they didn't write them down and they didn't produce depictions of them. We know that they existed. There are gods and goddesses of deities from the classical kind of Roman pantheon, as it calls, so some of the names people might know, Juno, Jupiter, Minerva, Victory, etc.

Then equally, the soldiers who are coming to Hadrian's Wall bring their own local to them deities, you know, if they've come from Germania or come from Palmyra and places like that. So it is this real melting pot. So we have a few really nice examples that people can kind of go and see objects from or see the site. So at Carabrugh Fort, which is in between Chester's and Halstead, so in that central sector,

there's a temple to Mithras. Mithras is an Eastern deity, a real kind of import, but not a direct import from outside of the empire. He's morphed and changed as he becomes part of the Roman religion. He from outside of the empire, is morphed and changed as he becomes part of the Roman religion. He's found across the empire, very much travels with the Roman army. And there's a temple to Mithras there at Carabroof. And you can see some inscriptions, you know, set up by the soldiers. So that's a very much an Eastern deity all the way up on

Hadrian's Wall. And next door to the temple of Mithras, now not visible because the spring that she controlled has blocked, so the whole area is marshy, a shrine to Coventina, who we think was very much a local pre-Roman goddess of the spring that was there. And she was probably worshipped before the Romans arrived, but then the Romans came and they Romanised, which is not a great phrase, but they changed the way that Coventina is worshipped and a well is built and a square temple is built on top of this spring and offerings are made to Coventina in a very Roman way. So that shows you the Romans changing that local belief because Roman religion is so much more pervasive than our religion. We're very much in a secular world now. They believe the gods genuinely had real impact on their lives. So you have to keep them happy. So

if you're coming to a new place, you don't want to anger the spirits, the geni of this new place. You keep them happy by worshiping them. The Romans wouldn't have worshipped the same way as the pre-Roman culture. So they've adapted Coventina to keep her happy, but they worship her in the way they accept. And then the last one, which again shows that real kind of mix in is Mars, very classical Roman god of war, obviously very popular soldiers. At Halstead, we have inscriptions to Mars Thynxus alongside and linked with the Alaziagi, who are female deities from Germany. And they've been put together to be worshipped together. Mars Thynxus is a hybridization of classical Mars and the Thynxus, which comes from Germany. And it's German soldiers based at Halsted's. They've taken the classical Mars, they've brought their own

local one, and they're worshipping in them together. So yeah, it's a real melting pot. And in some ways, I suppose it seems quite liberal that the Romans let you continue to worship your own deities. And that's because Roman religion was polytheistic. So you could worship whoever you wanted as long as you accepted and offered to the Roman deities. So that's why the Romans had real problems with Judaism and Christianity because they're monotheistic, whereas they understood these religions they're coming into

where there's a spirit of that hill and there's a spirit of the hearth. And as long as you accepted that Jupiter was best and greatest and that you must offer to the emperor, you could also carry on offering to your local deity. Let's kind of move on slightly as we start wrapping up. Hadrian's Wall and the whole evolution of it, of course, this is in existence for some 300 years of Roman rule in Britain between the 2nd and the 5th century AD. Do we know much about how Hadrian's Wall evolves over that time? Because is it always the main frontier? No. So, as you'd imagine, in that long period of time,

things change. So, Hadrian very much had changed the policy from his predecessors, and he builds this wall. And then in 138, he dies, and he's succeeded by Antoninus Pius, who says, nope, I'm going to conquer Scotland, or what we would now call Scotland. We're going further north. So Hadrian's Wall is almost completely abandoned, not long after being constructed. We think there was probably a skeleton crew in some places, but the Valum was slighted so that they could get across that huge ditch to the south. And they move up and they build a new wall, although this is all turf, so we call it the Antonine Wall. And that's kind of approximately between Edinburgh and Glasgow. So the next little narrow bit, that doesn't last, doesn't work. When Antonine's Pius dies, they realise it's been unsuccessful and they move back to Hadrian's Wall in the 160s. And we see evidence of rebuilding on the wall. New inscriptions

are put up saying we've refurbished etc apparently according to sources in 180 ad tribes crossed the wall and we think again there was more changes to the wall repairs and that but also a reaction to that and you know lots of the turrets were abandoned mile castles had their gates narrowed so you could only fit kind of pedestrian traffic through so they're trying to control it they move a little bit where the cavalry are based, presumably to be able to respond better to attack. And as you mentioned quite early on, Britain having so many soldiers is a real target

for would-be emperors to have little coups or take over. So as the years go on, soldiers are slowly taken away from Britain for various things, whether it's problems elsewhere in the empire, you know, other bits as the years go on, soldiers are slowly taken away from Britain for various things, whether it's problems elsewhere in the empire, you know, all the bits of the empire under attack, or it's, you know, emperors bringing them to, you know, make their point that they are now the emperor. And so, by the 4th century, the troop numbers are quite significantly reduced, and those civilian settlements that are around every fort seem to have been abandoned pretty much. And, you know, the way the forts are laid out and used changes quite a lot, really. So,

it's a constant evolution and reaction to the situation. And then kind of going on from there, as we kind of get to those last few centuries of Roman rule, I mean, you've had also Septimius Severus there when he tries once again to conquer the north of Britain. That fails and Hadrian's Wall once again becomes this main frontier and mantle and all of that. As we do get to those last few decades of Roman rule in Britain, I mean, Frances, how does Hadrian's rule change? So, you know, officially, Britain leaves the Roman Empire in 410 AD. You know, that's a letter that is sent to them saying, you know, fend for yourself, mate. It's not that simple.

It's like the very high officials might have been recalled to Rome or elsewhere in the empire, but many of the soldiers that are living in the forts then would have been there for a couple of generations because at that point, you're having to follow your father in his career. It's been made legal, we think, partly to keep the Roman army supplied. And they'd be settled, they'd have wives, they'd have families, they'd probably have land outside the fort. So probably initially, very little changed. And Burgos was a real place where you can see that longer term, what happens after the first 10 or 15 years, say. Because once you haven't got the might of the empire in terms of its logistical and you know supply routes etc repairing stone buildings you know getting supplies from far afield is going to

get much more difficult so what happens it seems that the people who've stayed on the wall set up almost a little their own more regional war bands if you want to call it that way and fend for themselves and they repair the buildings as they can so So at Bird Oswald, a large-aisled, long rectangular building is constructed and there's evidence there for occupation well into the 6th century. We haven't got that evidence from other sites, but it doesn't mean it's not there. It's just that evidence is so much more ephemeral once you're not building in stone that it's either been missed or it's just not been looked for yet. I mean, does it therefore seem to happen quite quickly as we get to the Middle Ages and we focus on the legacy that Hadrian's Wall is almost kind of picked away at by different people?

You say looking for local stone for their own buildings and so on and so forth. Does that whole kind of transformation into Hadrian's Wall almost becoming its own quarry and stone resource for nearby people, does that seem to happen quite quickly? Yes, absolutely. So Hexham Abbey is a very famous building. We know exactly when it was begun to be constructed. That's 674. So, what's that? 250 years. Corbridge, the Roman town that we've talked about as part of the frontier, we know they came down the river to Corbridge to plunder that. Lanacost Priory, when it was first built, was built out of bird or sword. You know, all the farm buildings that you see as you drive along that central sector are built out of Hadrian's Wall because it's human nature, isn't it? Why would you go and quarry your own stone

when you've got lovely cut stone there? And, you know, it's not just about the physical nature of the wall, the physical aspect of the wall very quickly kind of disappearing. People's understanding of what the wall was quickly kind of disappearing people's understanding of what the wall was and who built it and when it dated to that disappears very quickly so you've got gildas and bead two of the monks you know in the 7th century and already by their time it's not called you know hadrian's wall it's not even often called the roman wall sometimes it's called the picts wall you know there's so much information lost quickly about who built the wall and when it was occupied and yeah it's very interesting. It blows your mind how all that information can

just vanish so quickly well I guess in today's day and age where you have technology at our fingertips and stuff like that it feels almost impossible to happen but I guess back then when you don't have that sort of technology and that information just does fade away because if you're not near the wall, if you're living in Britain, you're not really going to know much about Hadrian's Wall or those communities further north. No. And if history is passed down through an oral history tradition, you only pass down what's important to you. And the people living on the wall, the history of the wall is probably not important. What's important is how you've made your own community and how you survived. So you've got to think, how is the history being passed down? And so what does it mean is passed down? And also we say, oh, 250 years, it's not

that long. But actually, if you look back 250 years from now, that's many, many generations, isn't it? The legacy of Hadrian's Wall could be another podcast episode in its own right. But I will ask you one further part of the legacy of it, and that is in regards to literature and TV and media today. Because Hadrian's Wall, I mean, for centuries, it has inspired various types of artists, writers, and of course, more recently, TV producers too, hasn't it? It is just this visible, monumental legacy in the Northern English countryside that has inspired so many people. Well, exactly. Rudyard Kipling wrote Puck of Poop's Hill. W.H. Auden wrote the Roman

War Blues poem about a soldier who was very sad and upset to be on this miserable frontier. People might have read Rosemary Sutcliffe and her Eagle of the Ninth series. And I think many more people will probably have watched Game of Thrones, but I don't know if they will know that George R. R. Martin came to Halstead, the fort we've been talking about, and he stood on that northern end of the fort, looked out across Barbaricum, as the Romans called it, and he imagined himself as a soldier there. And that is what inspired the ice wall. Obviously, the ice wall is a much bigger scale, but you can see where it comes from. And I quite regularly talk to people who've been inspired by visiting the wall, whether it's on a small scale or a professional scale. And I think it is inspiring. You go to sites and you can almost touch the people who've lived there. I think some sites are even more atmospheric

than others. I would say the Mithraeum at Carabrof is one of those where it's so atmospheric. And lastly, we should mention this, shouldn't it? And it must have affected you and your colleagues who've been working on the wall for so many years when it did happen. It was tragic last year, which is of course Sycamore Gap and the tree there, because it was one of the great emblems of the wall, wasn't it? It was really important to the wall story. Because it was one of the great emblems of the wall, wasn't it? It was really important to the wall's story. It was, you know, it became known as the view, didn't it?

People would come just to photograph that. It was made famous by, you know, the Robin Hood, where he landed at Dover and came via Hadrian's Wall to get to Nottingham. Not the most sensible, but I think it's one tree, but it does symbolise how, you know, one place can really capture people's imaginations. And it's maybe a couple of hundred years that it was planted there possibly you know by John Clayton who was key figure in saving large sections of the wall and yeah I got the text and I thought I had to check it wasn't you know almost a joke or April Fool's I just couldn't believe it and thank goodness it didn't do more damage to the archaeology and there's some hopefully some

good things coming out of it and one thing a project that i have worked on actually with lots and lots of archaeologists who've worked on hadrian's wall as a response is we've created a book of views of hadrian's wall to remind people obviously you know we all felt horrendous about sycamore gap but say let's find our own new iconic view of the wall and you know that's 80 archaeologists and we've spanned different views um to try to kind of mitigate our loss of losing sycamore gap well that's a lovely plug to end it on i must admit my image now immediately goes to the crags right next to hausteds because that's that's another striking one isn't it well francis all i could say i think we'll wrap it up there because this has been an absolutely fascinating chat francis it just goes

to me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today. Not at all. You're very welcome. Well, there you go. There was Dr. Frances McIntosh talking all things Hadrian's Wall. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. It was brilliant to chat to Frances again after a few years since we did a documentary series together all about Hadrian's world which you can go and watch on the History Hit YouTube channel today or on History Hit TV. Last thing from me, wherever you're listening to the podcast, make sure that you are subscribed, that you are following The Ancient so that you don't miss out when we release new episodes twice

every week. But that's enough from me and I will see you in the next episode.