the times Saturday April 9 2022Travel 53
has sent Verecundus some plants. Then we
hear from the green-fingered commander,
writing to Audax about the delivery of
some young cabbages and turnips.
“What’s really striking about these finds is
the way that you can actually start to
follow individual stories,” Marta Alberti,
the site archaeologist, says as she shows
me the finds. No kidding. Poor Verecundus
— gardening in the wet Northumbrian
hills must have been a challenge.
Of course, there’s no way you can do
justice to all this history in one day, even if
you stick to the wall’s central stretch, so
give it two, and base yourself in the area
around Chollerford or East Wallhouses.
In these modern villages you’ll find
upmarket hotels, self-catering properties
from specialists such as Crabtree & Crab-
tree and gastronomic restaurants. The
five-star Matfen Hall hotel serves melt-in-
the-mouth lamb for dinner, but the real
treat in these parts is a night at Hjem, a
Michelin-starred restaurant with rooms
that brings a stripped-back, Scandinavian
sensibility to local ingredients — includ-
ing a dish of North Sea halibut with razor
clams, walnuts and hazelnuts that smells
like chocolate.
Then you can pace yourself. A walk
along the wall between Housesteads and
Sycamore Gap will give you a taste of its
rigour as it rollercoasters over the crags.
At Bewcastle you’ll get a sense of what
happened after Britain slipped from the
empire’s failing grasp. Here, pioneering
archaeological work by Tony Wilmott
proved that the fort was occupied for years
after the break with Rome.
And don’t forget to buy a souvenir
before you go. It’s just the last of many
ways to connect with the men and women
— Romans, Britons, Greeks, Belgians and
the rest — who make this place fas-
cinating, 1,900 years since they started
work. Why? Because the archaeology
suggests that they took keepsakes away
with them too. So far, three enamelled
Roman vessels decorated with the names
of forts on the wall have been found across
Britain and Europe.
McIntosh will be showing two of
them at Chesters Roman Fort in
September. They are beautiful little
mementos of an extraordinary place —
as much now as it was then.garrison busy and effective in the cold.
I thought too of the smells: sweat, wet
stone, damp wool, wood smoke. McIntosh
smiled when I told her, then led me
down to the latrines, at the southeastern
corner. They are magnificently preserved
— stout, spacious and meticulously
engineered, with a system of gently slop-
ing gutters that kept the water flowing.
All that’s missing is the top half of the
building, the wooden loo seats and, of
course, occupants. “And you can’t get any
more personal than that,” I told McIntosh
as we stood leaning into the wind.
Actually you can, because — as I soon
discovered — there’s one other site here
that stands head and shoulders above the
rest when it comes to communing with
the Romans: the fort at Vindolanda. This
also predates the wall, and was rebuilt on
multiple occasions. Two things have made
it an archaeological wonder: the first is the
careless way that the Romans disposed of
their rubbish; the second is the ever wet,
anaerobic conditions in which it has been
preserved, in near immaculate condition.
Since 1970 the Vindolanda Charitable
Trust, which owns the site, has been
digging it up, with jaw-dropping results:
hobnailed boots, those wooden loo seats,
a severed head (once stuck on a spike) —
the discoveries keep coming. But none has
been so remarkable as the thin wooden
writing tablets that the army used for
memos and messages.
In one, unearthed in 2017, Masclus asks
his commander, Julius Verecundus, for
leave on behalf of five Rhaetians (from
the northeastern Alps); he also says that heCelebrate the human history at this
extraordinary 73-mile site, now in its
1,900th anniversary year. By Sean Newsom
N
ext time you go to Had-
rian’s Wall, make sure you
call in at the Roman town
of Corbridge. It’s a couple
of miles south of the
emperor’s emphatic 73-
mile northwest frontier.
According to Dr Frances McIntosh,
its English Heritage curator, the
town gets only 20 per cent
of the visitors who
flock to the wall’s most
popular forts. And
this year — the
1,900th annivers-
ary of the famed
site; Hadrian
came to Britain
to build his wall
in AD122 — it
makes sense to
do it properly.
When I invited
myself up to her
patch to scout out the
perfect Hadrianic week-
end, McIntosh insisted that
we start with Corbridge. And I’m
glad she did. Because for anyone who
wants to enrich their understanding of
this vast imperial project, it is the essential
first stop.
Along with Carlisle, Corbridge predates
the wall, and developed into one of its
principal centres of supply and admini-
stration, growing fat on the proceeds.
Glittering treasures have been pulled from
its ruins. One — an intricate gold ring —
proclaims itself, in Greek letters, “The
love token of Polemius”; another is an
elaborate 4th-century silver tray, known
as the Corbridge Lanx, now in the British
Museum (there’s a replica on site).
Even so, it’s what lies outside McIntosh’s
museum that really counts. Only four of
the town’s 54 acres are exposed, but they
include the remains of two mighty gran-
aries, as well as an elaborate fountain,beneath which stands a public water
trough, its top edge worn into a series of
U-shaped depressions. “Any idea what
made them?” McIntosh asked. I shrugged.
She told me to kneel down, lean against the
side of the basin and reach over as though
I were scooping water from the tank with
a bucket, and that’s when I discovered
that each “U” fitted my rib cage
perfectly. And no wonder,
because that’s what made
them — the rib cages of
hundreds of people
who, day after day,
leant in to fill
their buckets.
The trough dates
from the late
2nd or early
3rd century, and
rarely have I felt
an 1,800-year gap
to be so narrow.
I was reminded of
the central fact of this
giant project, which is
often lost amid its cold, grey
remains. It was an undertaking
that ultimately rested on the shoulders of
people. Once you’ve felt their presence
like this, the frontier’s former inhabitants
are impossible to ignore.
So it was when McIntosh took me up to
see Housesteads, the fort 12 miles north-
west of Corbridge. On the edge of a vast
volcanic slab known as the Whin Sill, it’s
the wildest, most weather-beaten of the
wall’s excavated forts, one of three admin-
istered by English Heritage. This is the
frontier as everyone pictures it — high,
remote and tormented by an almost con-
tinuous wind. For most of its active history,
McIntosh told me, it was garrisoned by
mail-shirted auxiliaries from what is now
Belgium; later, this was done by locals.
For most of the year it would have been
a remorseless posting. I imagined the
sheer will power required to keep theSean Newsom was a
guest of Avanti West
Coast (avantiwestcoast.
co.uk); Crabtree &
Crabtree, which has four
nights’ self-catering for
four in cottages near the
wall from £451 (crabtree
andcrabtree.com); and
Hjem, which has
half-board doubles from
£180pp (restaurant
hjem.co.uk). For details
of the celebrations, see
1900.hadrianswall
country.co.ukNeed to
know
SCOTLANDENGLAND10 milesHadrian’s
Wa l l VindolandaEast
WallhousesHjem CorbridgeChollerford
HousesteadsThe Granary cottage in CorbridgeHappy birthday, Hadrian’s Wall
Part of the wall near Caw Gap, west of HousesteadsHjem restaurantGETTY IMAGES; TRACEY BLOXHAM