THE ROMAN MILE-STONE ON THE STANEGATE, NEAR VINDOLANDA,
WITH BARCOMBE, RISING BEHIND THE TREES
A boy on a bicycle came by, and stopped to look at the stone, chattering away to me while I worked:
"What age is the old thing? About 80 A.D.? Well, he has stuck it out! Wonder how much of him there is underground. As much again, I suppose. I say, did you have difficulty in getting water-colour paper during the War? No? Well, lucky you didn't! Chaps in the Government office I worked in, they'd get out a half-crown sheet of Whatman when they wanted a table-cloth for tea! Lot of that sort of thing done. Shame, I call it. Flies are a nuisance here; don't you find them so? No? Well, I do. Good morning."
And off he went.
CORSTOPITUM.
I had heard from various sources that I must not miss seeing the Roman town of Corstopitum at Corbridge; but on my first attempt, when I motored with friends to the little town on the Cor Burn, we only succeeded in finding a field-gate with a notice up, "Excavations closed." So obediently we went away, only to be told afterwards how foolish we had been to pay any regard to the notice, for if we had inquired at the farm, we could have got the key of the little Museum-shed, and have seen everything. But how were we to know that? I was not able to go again until I most happily fell in with the Pilgrimage of the Archæological Societies, and was allowed to join it.
Corstopitum is 2½ miles south of the Roman Wall, and on the line of the Stanegate, of which its chief street forms a part. Dere Street crossed the river here by a bridge of ten piers, and entered this site. It seems that the importance of Corstopitum dates from the time of Agricola, but was greatly increased after the building of the Antonine Wall, 140 A.D., and its most prosperous times were in that period. It probably depended for its protection chiefly on the Wall and the Wall forts, being itself only a great military store, covering 30 acres, of which 20 have been excavated.
When I visited the excavations they had been neglected for years owing to the war, and ragwort and thistles had done their best to blot them out again. I could not help thinking of these beautiful lines by Maude Egerton King:
"Not bands, nor wheels, nor belching towers
Can break, or yoke,
Or blind with smoke
The vital powers,
So swift to spread their cloak
Of grassy forgiveness and sweet-scented stars
Over earth's man-made scars."