Hadrian's Wall

by Jessie Mothersole

The most modern version of "John Ridley" showed me the chives which are supposed to date back to Roman times, and which look like patches of fine grey grass growing on the flat rocks on the hillside below the mile-castle. I should never have found them without help. I pulled some up, and ate some of the tiny onion-like roots with my bread-and-cheese lunch, just to see how they must have tasted to the Roman sentries, who probably ate them on the same spot when they were off duty.

I had finished my sketch of Walltown, and it was still in my painting-case when I was sitting working late one evening on Sewingshields Crags. The case lay on the grass by my side. When it was time to go home, I strapped it up tight as usual. Next morning, when I looked at the sketch, there was a large, round, dry yellow patch spread out over it! A slug had walked into my painting-case, and in strapping it up I had compressed it on the middle of the picture. I removed it carefully with a pen-knife, and every scrap of colour came with it. The (probable) birthplace of the slug and the actual scene of its death are two of the pictures which are not included in this book.

I passed another Wall turret, with only the back wall standing. Just after that came a wide nick, full of trees, alders and hawthorn, still dripping from the recent rain. The sweet smell of wet young bracken greeted me all the time. Before the next nick there are some good bits of Wall, seven or eight courses high.

So up and down went the Wall, and I with it, clinging to the sides of the steepest nicks, with unswerving loyalty to plan! Sometimes its northern face, overhanging the cliffs, presented an unbroken surface of facing-stones for 5 or 6 feet; sometimes there was but a mere mound.

Several of the nicks are little groves of trees. Sheep were grazing everywhere, and rabbits still abounded. You might see them sitting up on the Wall, the evening sun shining through their transparent ears, with a (literally) blood-red glow; or playing all sorts of pranks, apparently without fear of intrusion.

The Wall finally runs straight to the edge of Greenhead Quarry, where an iron fence is placed, to keep the unwary (or too-faithful!) follower of the Wall from tumbling over the cliff, as, alas! the Wall has already done.

In the 1884 edition of Dr. Bruce's Handbook, there is an interesting picture of a Wall turret standing on the very edge of the quarry. Now it has gone; it has simply been quarried away!

Not only was the rain over, but the sun was sending long level golden rays over the tops of the hills as I came to the quarry; and this was the end of my Wall-walk for the day. They were standing at the door looking out for me when I arrived at the house where I was to spend the night, for I had been delayed by the storm.

I had felt indignant about that Wall turret, but the next day I realized the necessity of forgiving my enemies (in the shape of the Greenhead Quarry Company), for I accepted an invitation to visit the quarry before continuing my walk.