In performance of a vow.
Besides these and some other inscribed stones, many coins have been found here; amongst them, Brand mentions denarii of Trajan, Hadrian, Faustina senior, and Domitian; brass coins of Valentinian, Gratianus, Diocletian, Faustina, and Maxentius, with many others not legible. Obscene figures are frequently found in Roman stations. They were worn by females as a religious charm. Benwell has furnished one such example of a very remarkable kind. Before leaving the station, the inquiring traveller will do well to examine the stones of the park-wall. He will soon detect many of Roman mould, whose faces have been scarred by the blasts of many centuries. The larger ones have been derived from the Wall—the smaller, from the curtain wall of the station, or the dwellings erected within it.
CONDERCUM.
The pleasant village of Benwell lies a little to the south-west of the station. ‘The old tower of Benwell-hall,’ says Bourne, 'was the place where the prior of Tynemouth resided some part of the summer, and the chapel, which Mr. Shaftoe opens and supplies for the good of the people of his village, was the prior’s domestic chapel.' Who that visits the spot will say that the prior who made the selection was not a man of taste? Benwell, as Horsley remarks, is not improbably thought to have its name from the northern word ben, (Saxon binnan) signifying within, and well for wall, as being seated within, or on the south side of the Wall.[[69]] Whitaker derives the Roman name of the station, Condercum, from the Celtic Cond ar gui, the height upon the water.[[70]] The river being near, the description is apposite.
Leaving Condercum, we again pursue our journey westward. The road for several miles running upon the base of the Wall, the facing stones may not unfrequently be seen for some distance together, protruding through the ‘metal.’ This used to be more the case formerly than at present, for since the diversion of the traffic from the road to the rail, motives of economy have induced the road surveyors to quarry, in some places, the last remnants of this great work of antiquity, for materials with which to repair the highway. The north fosse, as we pursue our journey, becomes more distinct on the right of the road.
THE WALL AT DENTON.
Descending Benwell-hill, the village of East Denton is reached. Here we meet for the first time with a fragment of the Wall. The accompanying wood-cut exhibits its present state. William Hutton describes the interesting relic with becoming reverence.
At Denton Dean, situated at the bottom of Benwell-hill, the great road veers a few yards to the right, that is into Severus’ ditch, and gives us for the first time a sight of that most venerable piece of antiquity, The Wall, which is six yards south of the road, and twenty short of the brook I am going to pass. The fragment is thirty-six feet long, has three courses of facing stones on one side, and four on the other, and is exactly nine feet thick. An apple tree grows on the top.
It has lost a course of facing-stones since Hutton saw it, and the apple tree is but the shadow of what it was.