From Drumburgh Castle I continued my way through the village, where there are many clay houses. Nothing of the Wall is to be seen until after a sharp double turn in the road. Here, after the second turn, I saw the Wall-ditch plainly in a meadow to the south of the road; this was just after passing the schools, where a young master was drilling the boys and girls with a great assumption of sternness. The Wall can be traced at intervals in the fields to the south, following pretty closely the line of the road as far as Port Carlisle.
Nearing Glasson, both Wall and road turn towards the sea. At the cross-roads to the north of Glasson, the tall chimneys of the Dornock works in Dumfriesshire are seen across the Solway, straight ahead along the road we are travelling. Soon after this, the road runs along close to the sea, with only a grassy stretch between, and then Port Carlisle comes into view. The core of the Wall is to be seen occasionally on the left. Three farms stand here, facing the sea—Lowtown, Westfield and Kirkland.
Port Carlisle was known as Fisher's Cross before the canal to Carlisle was opened in 1823. The attempt to make it the port of Carlisle was a failure, owing to the tendency of the harbour to get silted up with sand and mud. In 1854 the canal was filled up as far as Drumburgh, and a railway made on its site. Docks were constructed at Silloth, and the railway continued to that point.
Until recently travellers to Port Carlisle had to continue their journey from Drumburgh in a "horse-dandy," drawn along the dry bed of the canal. Now the railway goes all the way; and one of the dandies, painted Indian red, occupies a distinguished position as an "antiquity" opposite the platform of the railway station, while the other serves in the lowlier capacity of a hen-house close by.
Port Carlisle consists of a single street of comfortable-looking stone houses facing the sea. A well-kept bowling-green and tennis-courts near the station provide amusement for the railway servants in the long intervals between trains. It was all interval when I was there, for this part of the line was closed during the coal-strike.
The jetty where the boats used to unload is now in a ruinous condition. The sea has broken through it, so at high tide the far end is a grass-grown island where visitors have been cut off from escape by the water. I looked for the Packet Hotel where the fragment of an altar, inscribed "MATRIBVS SVIS," is built in over the door, and I found it was no longer an Inn, but a farm-house, the last house in the long street, just where the coast-line begins to bend round towards Bowness.
I had seen no trace of the Wall since passing Kirkland, but I knew I ought to be able to pick it up here, so I walked round behind the ex-hotel, and began to look about. A girl was sitting sewing in the doorway of a cottage, and I asked if she could help me. "Oh yes," she said; "I'll fetch my father." An old man appeared, with a pot of green paint in one hand and a paint-brush in the other.
"You have come to the right man," said he.
Then, with a dramatic wave of the paint-brush, "The Roman Wall passed by this very doorstep." He gave me full instructions as to how to find it farther on:
"Follow along the road to Bo'ness till you come to a gooter across the road, then turn to the left up a grassing-field, and go on till you come to an elbow. Turn to the right, and you come to a high lift; over that lift you'll find the Wall."