This shapeless mound thou know’st not what to call
Was a world’s wonder once—this was the Roman wall.”
Here, indeed, the great bulwark against northern barbarism approached the Tyne on either of its banks. The river is now crossed by a bridge which was built in 1775, but there still exist substantial remains of that by which the Roman legions crossed over to the great stations of Procolitia and Cilurnum. Procolitia was one of a trio of important stations near to this portion of the North Tyne, and is some three or four miles away. Not many years ago no less than 16,000 coins, besides some rings, and twenty Roman altars, were discovered on this site. The coins ranged from the days of the Triumvirate to those of Gratian. The altars were all dedicated to Coventina. Who Coventina may have been, the antiquaries inquire in vain. Of her neither Greek, nor Roman, nor Celtic mythology has kept record. What is clear is that she must have been worshipped by the first cohort of Batavians, which kept guard here when these altars were made. At Cilurnum, now known as the Chesters, nearer by three miles to the bank of the Tyne and the ancient Roman bridge, altars were raised to more various deities. A cohort of Asturians was in garrison here. With the exception of Newcastle, probably, and Birdoswald certainly, this was the most important station on the Roman wall, and is at this time far the most wonderfully preserved. One may stand in the grounds of Mr. John Clayton, at the Chesters, and, with slight exercise of the fancy, reconstruct a Roman city in Britain, so materially is the imagination assisted by what recent excavations have disclosed. Agricola is believed to have built Cilurnum in 81 A.D. It existed as a camp before the wall was built, and covered a space of six acres of ground. Coal was found on one of the hearths when the place was first unearthed, a curious proof of the long period during which that mineral has been in use in the district through which this river flows. Among the statuary discovered was a well-preserved figure which is believed to represent the river-god of North Tyne:—
“The local deity, with oozy hair
And mineral crown, beside his jagged urn
Recumbent.”
At Chollerford the even course of the river is broken by a long curving weir, over which the “wan water” comes down magnificently in seasons of flood. “The water ran mountains hie” at Chollerford Brae, says an old ballad; but that is clearly an exaggeration. Nevertheless, Chollerford is not the place at which one would choose to cross the river at flood-time, and without a bridge, as happened with “Jock o’ the Side,” when he was hotly followed by pursuers from Newcastle town. It is odd how ancient and mediæval and ballad history centres around this quiet spot. Half a mile away is Heaven’s Field, where Oswald of Northumbria gathered his army around him, set up the standard of the Cross by the Roman wall, adjured his troops to pray to the living God, and overthrew in one of the most important battles of our early history the far larger forces of heathenesse. Here we are approaching the point where the North and the South Tyne, making a fork of swift, clear-shining water, unite their streams to form the great river of which Milton, and Akenside, and many another poet, have admiringly sung. By the ancient village of Warden, the two streams, as an old writer says, “salute one another;” and where they meet there is a stretch of water as wide almost as a lake, reflecting on still days the high-towering woods and the misty hills which divide North and South Tynedale.
