An Irishman's Diary

There was something about Hadrian's Wall that had long fascinated me, writes Desmond Fennell

There was something about Hadrian's Wall that had long fascinated me, writes Desmond Fennell. In those ancient times, when the fastest communication was by horse, the idea of "Rome" had sufficient force to hold Roman officers to their duty on that bleak, cold and wet northern frontier of the Empire.

A visit there, this rainy summer, brought me close to those men and to their soldiers and womenfolk. It also gave me hints, not irrelevant to an Irishman, as to how the present-day inhabitants of a land once imperially ruled can make both money and local fun out of the leftovers of empire.

The tourist literature of the stretch of country between Newcastle-on-Tyne and Carlisle calls it "Hadrian's Wall Country". The bus company that serves the towns and Roman sites from coast to coast is AD122, the year that the Emperor Hadrian visited Britannia and gave the order to build the wall.

The shop windows in the town of Haltwhistle, near the middle of the bus route, were displaying a poster showing a Roman soldier in full armour with the text: "Haltwhistle Goes Roman. Saturday 18th August 10.00am-4pm. Meet Centurion Maximus. Armoury display. Roman herbs and foods. Join the Roman army. Market stalls. Prizes for best dressed 'Roman' family and themed treasure hunt".

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Not to be outdone, Wallsend station (Wall's End!) of the Newcastle Metro has all its station notices in Latin and English. But the most psychologically challenging instance of all this Roman retro - for this Irishman - is the memorial stone standing outside the Vindolanda museum. The engraved text begins: "In memory of all the units of the Roman army who served in Britain" - and there follow the official Latin names of various cohorts and three or four legions, ending with "and the other unknown units". Mutatis mutandis, a similar commemorative stone in Ireland? Not feasible, I suppose, until the Republic embraces all Ireland.

Vindolanda is one of a series of back-up forts immediately behind the wall. Forts they are called, but "bases" might be more descriptive. Each of them, the remains show us, was a military complex within a rectangular wall, containing barracks, headquarters, commander's residence, granary, hospital, and so on. A soldiers' bathhouse stood nearby, as well as a civilian village, where, among others of all sorts, the attached women and children of some of the soldiers lived. The troops, under a Roman commanding officer, were cohorts of non-citizen "auxiliary" soldiers drawn from present-day Spain, France, Holland, Austria, Hungary, Greece and elsewhere.

Vindolanda is famed because of the collection of letters and military documents discovered deep beneath the topsoil, in the remains of a bonfire which a downpour of rain extinguished. The British Museum has declared these postcard-sized writings to be Britain's top archaeological treasure. The most quoted of them is the affectionate invitation to her birthday party which Claudia Severa, wife of the commanding officer at another fort, sent to the Vindolanda commander's wife, Sulpicia Lepidina. (Need I add that there is today a Lepidina Café?) Another letter, perhaps an intelligence report, reveals the wog term which the Roman soldiers used for the natives - Brittunculi. An instance, I am told, of the "contemptuous diminutive". This treasure trove is still being chemically cleaned, made legible, and deciphered.

And ah yes, the wall itself. Long gone is the 20-foot-high stone structure, stretching for 73 miles, with a fortified gate every mile and between the gates two look-out turrets. Before it became a World Heritage Site, tens of thousands of its cut and faced stones had gone to build fine farmhouses, town houses and rural hostelries. When General Wade, in the 1700s, was making Scotland easier to get at for anti-Jacobite purposes, he tumbled much of the wall's eastern stretch into the foundations of a military road.

But for most of its length a rump is still there. It looks like an extra wide field wall, climbing and descending the curvaceous grassy hills. A well-trod path runs alongside it. Glancing up northwards from some streets in Haltwhistle, Corbridge or Hexham you can sometimes make out, against the skyline, moving groups of backpackers. For it is a walkers' route, with certificates awarded for denominated stretches and a diploma for the completed walk.

I was wrong about the fastest communication in those days being by horse. A local guide on an AD122 bus enlightened me about the Roman military signalling system. An urgent message, he told us, could be got to Rome in four days. Results from Britannia's principal chariot racetrack far to the south could reach the punters on Hadrian's Wall in the same afternoon.