Hadrian's Wall

by Jessie Mothersole

I obeyed these instructions as closely as I could, but I made the mistake of following a closed gutter instead of an open one, and this involved me in several unexpected difficulties. I reached the Wall-line sooner than my guide had intended, and the farmers about here seem to tax their ingenuity to make it as difficult as possible to follow that line. I crept under barbed wire into a "grassing" field and safely reached the hedge. Here were undoubted signs of Wall-core. I followed it to the hedge of the next field, and there I stopped. The hedge seemed quite impregnable, and there was no gate; all the hedges were of the thickest, and even if I could have made a hole, it would have been contrary to my code. I turned back to see if I could find an opening into the field on my left. A large ash-tree grew in the hedge, and without much trouble I climbed into its lower boughs, and could then make a drop of 6 feet into the next field. But again I was done! There was a gate on the west, it is true, but it was locked, and so thickly interlaced with thorn-bushes that I could not climb it. There was nothing for it but to reclimb my ash-tree, and have another look at my first hedge. I now saw that the end of a long ladder was laid flat on the top of this hedge, and rested on a gate-post in the field of my desire. Great masses of thorn-bush were heaped up under the ladder, which had evidently been thrown across as an additional barrier. Here was an opportunity to turn an enemy into a friend! I pulled myself up on to the ladder, walked from rung to rung over the thorn-bushes, and jumped off at the end, feeling that I had scored one over the farmer, for I had circumvented him without damaging his property. The next hedge was of thorn-trees growing on the ground, and there was just one small hole, between two trunks, big enough for me to creep through. And then I saw a fine piece of Wall—only the core, but several feet high, and in very good condition. A gateway had been cut right through it, and in the section the formation and the Roman mortar could be readily examined. The Wall-ditch was just discernible on its north side.

William Hutton says of this part of the Wall: "One mile prior to the extremity of our journey and at the distance of one inclosure on our left, appears in majesty, for the last time, Severus's Wall, being five or six hundred yards long, and three feet high, but, as in the mountains, all confusion. A fence grows upon it * * * In two places it is six feet high, eight broad, and three thick; but has no facing-stones." Dr. Bruce says that gunpowder was used in bringing it down.

It was after this that I came to the "elbow." The Wall-ditch was to be seen from the elbow running through the pasture to the next hedge. I followed, scrambling down the steep bank of a burn, and up the other side amid gorse and hawthorn, into a cart-track, with the Wall now on my right. The burn now served as the Wall-ditch.

I was quite near to the houses of Bowness by this time, and a gate on my left across the meadow brought me into a narrow lane, and thus into the road, not far from the church.

In the churchyard I saw a man in light tweeds carrying a bucket of water. He asked me courteously if I would like to have the key of the church, and I found I was addressing the Rector. Except for a very beautiful Norman font, there is nothing remarkable about the church.

From the main street I made my way through a little iron gate opposite the "King's Arms," down a steep grassy slope, and on to the shore by means of a rickety, rusty iron ladder, riveted by one leg to a rock. The view was lovely across the sands. On my left, crossing the Solway, was the Annan Railway Bridge, which had just been condemned as unsafe, and Criffel showed in a violet haze beyond it.

I thought from the sands I could best distinguish the probable site of the Roman fort, and I believe that I did succeed in identifying the western rampart, and the south-west and north-west angles.

Bowness is a quiet little place, standing high up above the Solway, with steep cobbled streets and many clay houses, "whose walls," said an old inhabitant to me, "are as thick as my stick is long." As seen from the ridge above the road to the west of the village, eight strips of colour, gradually receding, make up my impression of the view. First a strip of white road, then a strip of green grass; beyond that, a strip of yellow gorse; behind the gorse, a strip of marshland, pink with sea-thrift; then a strip of yellow dry sand, then a strip of brown wet sand; beyond that the blue water of the Solway, and, last of all, the blue-grey distance of Scotland.

There were fishing-smacks on the Solway, and there were fishermen fishing with their "half-nets" for salmon and trout.

Camden says of this part: "I marvailed at first, why they built here so great fortifications, considering that for eight miles or thereabout, there lieth opposite a very great frith and arme of the sea; but now I understand that every ebbe the water is so low, that the Borderers and beast-stealers may easily wade over." And he records how, in 1216, they came, and having stayed too long were swept away by the tide. His quaint words (or rather, Dr. Philemon Holland's quaint translation of them) are worth quoting: