Rejoining the lines of the Barrier, we find them about to descend into the valley watered by the Tipalt, insaniens flumen, as Camden calls it. The moat of the Wall is peculiarly well developed, that of the Vallum, though less so, is still distinct; they are exactly parallel to each other. Before the traveller forsakes his present elevation, it will be well for him to mark the westward course of the objects of his study, lest he lose their track in the swampy ground fronting Thirlwall Castle. A valley of considerable extent stretches before him; on the north brow of it, at the distance of about three miles, Gilsland Spa is situated; the works of the Barrier stand upon its southern edge. The trough of the north fosse may easily be discerned where it is intersected by the railway.

It has been suggested that one of the objects contemplated by the Romans in the construction of a double line of fortification, was the enclosure of a space of ground which might be cultivated by the garrison, and where their cattle might graze in security. If this had been the case, the Wall would have been drawn along the northern margin of the wide and fruitful valley of Gilsland, and the Vallum along its southern edge.

THIRLWALL CASTLE.

Thirlwall Castle is, as Hutchinson calls it, ‘a dark, melancholy fortress’ of the middle age.[[123]] It was for many centuries previous to its purchase by the ancestors of the earl of Carlisle, the residence of an ancient Northumbrian family of the name of Thirlwall. Amongst the witnesses examined on the occasion of the famous suit between the families of Scrope and Grosvenor, for the right to bear the shield ‘azure, a bend or,’ which was opened at Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1385, before king Richard II. in person, was John Thirlwall, an esquire of Northumberland. The witness related what he had heard on the subject of the dispute, from his father, who ‘died at the age of 145, and was when he died the oldest esquire in all the North, and had been in arms in his time sixty-nine years.’ Such is the language of the record of these proceedings, preserved in the Tower of London.

This locality may also bring to the reader’s remembrance the lines in Marmion—

The whiles a Northern harper rude

Chaunted a rhyme of deadly feud,

‘How the fierce Thirlwalls, and Ridleys all,

Stout Willimondswick,

And Hardriding Dick,