What Life Was Like On The Frontier Between The Romans & The Barbarians | Lost Treasures | Timeline

For the ancient Romans, Hadrian's Wall marked the very edge of the civilised world. In the winter, the wind whips in from the north, with snow in its teeth. This was obviously not going to be the favourite posting for a Mediterranean soldier. To cap it all, hostile tribes were never far away. But here, they had to stand. The last outpost which covered the whole of the known world. Imagine a snake, 73 miles long, 10 feet wide, 20 feet high, built from millions of tonnes of stone and turf, twisting and turning over the landscape from sea to sea. This is where the Romans drew a line as if to say, this far and no further, creating a division across an entire country. This is the mark to show that this land is ours. Here is the end of civilisation. Behind us are order, law and prosperity. Beyond this wall are only barbarians. The Romans had actually been in occupation up here for nearly 40 years before Hadrian's Wall is built. They'd briefly gone into Scotland, had to send a lot of troops abroad for other activities, withdrew to more or less the same line that Hadrian's Wall was eventually built on. The frontier was basically a lateral road from coast to coast with forts every seven or eight miles along it. For a Roman soldier in a mild castle, with his comrades gathered from the corners of the known world, Hadrian's Wall represented safety. The military might which had forced conquered lands to give up their men to fight wars on the other side of the world. But this was the greatest of all Roman fortifications. The Roman legionaries were equipped, trained and transported by the great machinery of the legion. They faced mysterious, hostile lands, occupied by bearded and painted warriors, uncivilised, cunning and deadly. We know the Great Wall across the north of Britain was ordered to be built by the Emperor Hadrian. We also know why it was built, as his biographer recalls his reasons. The Britons could no longer be held under control. Hadrian was the first to build a wall 80 miles long to separate the Romans and the barbarians. Hadrian's Wall is the most impressive of all Roman artificial frontiers. And Hadrian himself came here and had a look and obviously set the thing in motion because the Romans were getting attacked by rebellious Britons at the time, there's no question about it. But I think the main purpose of it was a statement for internal consumption. Hadrian really wanted something impressive to say, this is the end, there's going to be no more expansion. Therefore, he made it as elaborate and as impressive as possible. The wall still stands today as a reminder of the power that was Rome, a monument to the vibrant and powerful empire which extended from Asia to Britain. Hadrian's decision to build a wall was undoubtedly due to the fact he knew what the countryside was like around here. He must have had reports from his surveyors and engineers. Now, he's basically going from coast to coast. And he's taking advantage in the centre of the country of the great rising Windsill Ridge, just a ridge, just a mile north of us. Larger than that, it would look totally spectacular. And undoubtedly, a certain amount of the wall is a reflection of Hadrian's personality. It's a big job. I mean, fancy building a wall nine foot six or so thick, 15, 20 feet high. Ludicrous for the job it was supposed to do. But he built it because it's a symbol of himself. Today, many of these remains are strikingly well-preserved as they wind over Hillside Valley and Crag. Standing against the rain and the cold in northern Britain, the dark stones contrast with the green of the land in the midst of some of the wildest and most spectacular scenery in the British Isles. The sheer magnitude of the operation was an amazing feat of engineering. No bulldozers or mechanical diggers were used to dig the ditches and raise the wall. There was precious little technology beyond the simple trenching tools and the strong arms of the legionaries to wield them. This expresses so well the essential flavour of Rome and all it stood for at the height of its power. Here was a confident people, making the brave and bold decisions to mark a line from sea to sea with a wall. Here was an organised people with the vast reserves of manpower and money to see that it was carried out. Here were a people with an eye to history itself. Having built it, they seemed ready to stand and guard it for over 300 years. Over a million cubic yards of stone had to be torn from the ground, transported to the site and set in place by the hands of the legionaries. It began as a single wall, but it evolved in the building. By the time it was finished, it had become a complicated defensive system. What you've got to bear in mind about Hadrian's Wall as you see it now is that that is the final version. You know, ditch, wall, with its mild castles, turrets and forts, then a lateral road, then the Great Valum, and then to the south of the Valum, of course, there's the original frontier line, the road running from coast to coast with its forts every seven or eight miles along it. When the Romans landed in Britain, they moved through the countryside, constructing their crisscross network of roads, building their forts and dominating the land. The forts were mostly of a similar construction, with earth ramparts raised to surround the buildings within. These ramparts were crossed through wooden gatehouses and had watchtowers at the corners set to guard the buildings that lay inside. The layout of these buildings usually followed a set pattern. At the front, facing the enemy, were the barracks and stables for the troops stationed here. As well as common rooms for the men, there were separate rooms for the centurion and other officers. The barracks ranged down either side of a central road that led to the headquarters building. It was here, in a square building built around an open courtyard, that the day-to-day activities of the fort were organised. On the side of this building was a long, narrow hall with a dais at one end. This was the tribunal on which the commander stood to address his men. Behind this room were a series of smaller rooms, the central one of which was usually a shrine, and below this shrine was the fort's strongroom. Alongside the headquarters building was the commander's house, another square building around an open courtyard, and to the rear were more barracks and the workshops. The bathhouse was usually found outside the fort. This was the pattern repeated all over the country. An outstanding example of a Roman bathhouse can be found on the wall itself at Chesters. Built right next to the river, a complicated system of aqueducts brought water straight up into the bathhouse. Comprehensive excavations have revealed a system of boilers, hot rooms, warm rooms, cold rooms, and even changing rooms, which paint a complete picture of the Romans' love for bathing. It was a line of forts like this that was first used to mark the northern frontier of Roman occupation in Britain. This line of forts, two of which can still be seen at Corbridge and Vindolanda, were linked by a road which we now call the Staingate. Further south, within striking distance of the wall, were other Roman fortifications. This is Hardknock Fort in the Lake District, and its construction follows the classic Roman pattern of building. On a chill winter's day, the evocative landscape still gives a glimpse of what it must have been like to be a part of the garrison in these last outposts of the empire. Like the wall and the network of forts, the Roman roads which connected them were no mean engineering feat in themselves. Built of layers of stone upon smaller stone, with a metalled and cambered surface to let the water drain into the ditches at its side, they provided the occupying troops with a quick means of getting from place to place. Forts were usually built 14 miles or so apart, as this was reckoned to be a day's march along a Roman road. By this means, the forces of occupation had both the communication structure and the power base to hold Europe. Treat yourself to the best gift in history this holiday season. Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning podcasts and thousands of hours of original history documentaries released weekly exclusively on History Hit. There are topics for all history lovers, from Pompeii to D-Day. Sign up via the link in the description for an exclusive discount. Don't miss out on this incredible opportunity to explore the past like never before with History Hit. The exact reasons why Hadrian decided to replace this well-tried and tested system of forts along a road which worked in so many countries with a wall is not clear. There was a general crisis when Hadrian became emperor. The circumstances were very difficult. His predecessor died on his way back from a disastrous campaign in the east. He was proclaimed emperor by the army he was in command of in Syria. And then there were rebellions all around the frontiers, including in Britain. As far as Britain is concerned, our source says that Britons could not be kept under Roman control. So you ask the question, what sort of rebellion was it and where was it? I think the Vindolanda Tablets have thrown some light on that. For example, there's one tablet which is obviously a report on Britons who've been conscripted into the Roman army. And they're described as the naked Britons. And they're described as the Britunculi, which is a previously unknown word, obviously meaning something like nasty or pathetic little Brits. No love was lost between the Romans and these northern tribes, the Brigantes, Selgovi and Novanti. These warlike peoples, living in the harsh climate of the north of Britain, were never really defeated. They may have been subdued and pacified, but smouldering resentment directed at the invading Romans appears to have been quick to burst into flame. The fact that they kept a large army up here, and you're talking of many thousands of men, is to a certain extent a sign that they failed in what they were trying to achieve up here. Because normally, by moving an army in and keeping people under control for a while, they sort of civilised those people, as they like to call it, and they then gradually withdrew their forces, as they did in Spain, as they did in parts of North Africa and so on. Here, they never succeeded. Now, that is presumably due to the nature of the people they were dealing with up here. A document found at Vindolanda, close to the wall, reveals how these Britons appeared to the Romans. It has been translated to read, The Britons are unprotected by armour. There are very many cavalry. The cavalry do not use swords, nor do the wretched Britons take up fixed positions in order to throw javelins. Over the years, a number of folk legends have grown up, which include mythical victories over the Romans by barbarians. One of these is the disappearance of the Ninth Legion. Rosemary Sutcliffe, the great children's author, used it as a basis for her famous story, The Eagle of the Ninth. In the book, she describes how the Ninth Legion marched out of its barracks near York in the year 117 AD to deal with an uprising amongst the Caledonians, and was never heard of again. The sobering facts are rather less flattering to the barbarian tribes. Records from this time show that the Ninth Legion moved from Lincoln to York when the new barracks were finished there. They did indeed then move further north to do battle with the British tribes. This was under the leadership of the then Governor of Britain, Gaius Julius Agricola. He is recorded as leading a campaign to civilise the northern tribes. During the first year of this campaign, he failed to bring the Caledonians to battle. Instead, he was attacked himself. In a night attack by the tribesmen, he lost nearly one third of his army, including elements of the Ninth Legion. This is probably the incident that has passed into the folklore as the legend of the Lost Legion. But, like all great myths, there is an element of truth in the tale. Discoveries over recent years have proved that the Ninth Legion was actually destroyed in the line of duty, but in Syria, over 40 years later in 161 AD. If the whole Legion had been lost to the Caledonian tribes, it certainly would have been cause for comment. A Roman Legion of that time consisted of nearly 6,000 men. As well as the legionaries, there were cavalry, auxiliaries and support troops, offering all sorts of different trades and skills to keep the army on the move. It would have been extremely rare for all these to have been in the same place at the same time. Nowadays, it's thought that the Ninth Legion was probably withdrawn from Britain shortly after 155 AD. At that time, relations with the northern tribesmen and the British in general were becoming more settled. They moved to another trouble spot, through Holland and Germany, where records have been discovered, to do battle in the Middle East against the Parthians. It was during this campaign that they were indeed wiped out, a long way from the mountains, forests and valleys of northern Britain. Nevertheless, the legend of the destruction of the Ninth Legion echoes down through the mists of time. Even today, people standing on or near the wall have claimed to have heard and seen the ghosts of marching Roman soldiers. The legend of the lost legionaries continues to hold the popular imagination. The general tone of popular myths like these suggests that the Romans were losing the war in this area. This was not the case, although, in order to hold their own, the Romans had had to make a series of incursions into northern Britain. Hadrian seems to have simply decided that too many scarce resources were being deployed, and that enough was enough. He ordered that a line had to be drawn to mark the north-western frontier of Roman influence. It was across the wild countryside, north of the Steingate forts, that the wall was built. Naturally, they chose the more defensible parts of that landscape. In the absence of a natural barrier such as a river, hilltops and ridges were ideal. It was Hadrian himself, on a visit to Britain in 120 AD, who ordered the wall to be built. Right from coast to coast, such a wall is built, in spite of the fact that in this central sector here there was never any threat from the north. No army has ever come down the centre in this area. It's all moors and bogs and swamps up there, and the poor old soldiers actually building the wall on the top must have known this. You know, what on earth is the point of building a wall here? And the centurion would quietly say, because you're told to do it, and that's the only reason you need to know. At first, it was to have a purely military function. The original wall was to be styled on the mound and fence constructions found in Germany. And on other boundaries of the Roman Empire. The age of Roman expansion had come to a halt and the time of consolidation was upon them. The wall was simply to mark this north-western limit of the Roman Empire, to separate the Romans from the barbarians. In Germany, he had a similar sort of frontier, and these were the first frontiers the Romans had. Up to that point, up till Hadrian, Roman attitude was that their empire was going to go on expanding without end, so having a frontier was as below their dignity as the idea of having walls around the city of Rome. They didn't need it, they were invincible. Hadrian changed this. Initially, the orders were given to build a single wall. In the east, where stone was plentiful, it was to be all stone, 10 feet wide and 20 feet high. In the west, they were building it all from turf because there wasn't enough limestone to make the mortar. And so to start with, they had a turf wall. We know this because there's one section where they slightly rejigged it when they finally came to replace it in stone, which may have been a matter of 10 years, it may have taken a bit longer. And they built it on a slightly different alignment. So there's one stretch in Cumberland where the actual turf wall, which was the first sort of temporary structure, was still there. Alongside most of the length of the wall on the northern, barbarian side, except where the local landscape made it unnecessary, a ditch was to be dug. This was to be about 9 feet deep and 27 feet wide. The whole length of the wall was to be peppered with fortlets and turrets. The fortlets, each with gates to the north and south, were to have accommodation for up to 32 troops and were to be built every Roman mile. Between each of these mile castles, there would be two turrets. From these, the small garrisons, stationed on the wall itself, probably drawn from auxiliaries, recruited into the Roman legions from the British people themselves, looked northwards into the hostile lands beyond the wall. Here they watched for signs of trouble. And if it looked like it was going to be more than they could handle, they would send urgent signals back to their fellows in the forts on the stain gate. Reinforcements would then arrive hot-footed. It seemed like a perfect solution to the problems of this turbulent frontier. And very soon, men from every British legion were hard at work on the wall. It's a common misconception that all the rotten jobs of building on the wall are probably done by the natives with a few Romans in charge, supervising. But that's definitely not the case. The native Britons would be a very unreliable labour force. And apart from anything else, they weren't used to building in stone at all. They wouldn't have known what they were doing. We've got plenty of evidence that the wall is actually built by the men, the skilled craftsmen, drawn from three legions that were in Britain at the time. The 2nd Legion, the 20th and the 6th. And they've left their building stones all the way along the wall. And we know they built it. Obviously, a legionary gang is given a sector of maybe 100 yards or so of wall to build. And the centurion in charge, once it's built, normally signs his name off on a special little tablet on the wall, many of which we've found. Even before it was finished, the plans were altered. Orders went out that the main fighting force was to be moved onto the wall itself. Presumably, they were being attacked or it was taking too long for the regiments to get up if there was an emergency. So they decided to put forts actually on the wall, in some cases across the wall. In the end, there were a total of 17 forts which are more or less on the wall. But one or two, such as Vindolanda, which were left, although it's a mile away. There are a few others which are not actually joined on physically to the wall. But in many cases, they actually were astride the wall with three gateways, two at the side and one on the north side, beyond the wall, probably for cavalry, so cavalry could come out in strength simultaneously from the three gateways. That was what you can call the third stage. And it must have been absolutely maddening because they'd already built the wall and turrets and mile casters in case we had to be demolished and then they put the fort there. It was also ordered that the wall itself should be narrowed to eight feet rather than ten and that it should be extended in stone at each end to protect the flanks as long as they could get the limestone. Perhaps this was an indication of heightened tension or increased threats. You can still see the signs of this change of plans today. In parts, a narrow wall sits on broad foundations and there are turrets and mile castles that were built to fit into the wider wall and had to be changed to fit into the new narrower gauge. This radical change of plan has been dated to about 124 AD. At the same time, work had begun on extra defences to the immediate south of the wall. This was the ballon, two earth mounds rising some six feet above ground level flanking a central ditch some ten feet deep with a total width of about 120 feet. This would have presented a formidable obstacle to any would-be attacker. They built the wall with a great ditch in front of it and therefore these mile castles and turrets along it and then a few years later they decided, we've got to put the regiments absolutely on the wall too so they built these forts like house tents and they built this great earthwork to the south. Now there's no conceivable reason for that except to seal off the military zone and therefore the implication is that the natives were creeping up at night and setting fire to Roman installations which suggests that their control over this area the Pennines was not absolutely 100% under control. This was the southern boundary of the military area a sort of Roman barbed wire. As with the mile castle gates which they faced the vallum crossing points offered a measure of control over the north-south traffic in the region. Rules about contraband and weapons could be enforced and more importantly taxes could be collected. It was the customs barrier of its day. It's not built for defence although it's got a lot of troops stationed along it there are more troops stationed to the north and a lot more troops also to the south. I mean a Roman frontier is a frontier in depth the physical barrier well what he does by building that is achieve something that he probably had in mind an excellent customs line there are all sorts of gates in the wall and whoever is going to be trading north and south has got to go through those gates where of course the Roman soldiers can search them, tax them do all sorts of things to them. But why make changes to plans hardly begun? Things were not going well in this part of the Roman world and the natives were getting restless they didn't like the Romans and they didn't like their wall. It was like a modern day motorway cutting through the landscape severing long used footpaths and trade routes and even cutting off fields What happened after the wall is built was the wall for example successful did it do the job Hadrian wanted it to do did it quiet the natives down did it actually separate this lot from that lot up there the short answer is that from Roman historians we know absolutely nothing again we go back to this business they had to remain here so presumably there was always a problem but the natives on both sides weren't fools and although there were all these gateways leading through the wall manned certainly where they might be taxed I'm sure a certain amount of ingenuity would be used and they must have known of the odd corrupt Roman soldier and they could get through his milecastle if they went at the right time and also of course in the ultimate resort if they really had trouble along the wall they could get into a ship and sail round it soon the British on both sides of the wall were plotting and planning against the Romans and their wall very soon the wall had become for the Romans a way to divide these allies from each other rather than keeping the enemy at arm's length the military purpose had changed as well no longer the passive line of watchtowers if there was a threat from the northern tribes the Roman troops could mass under the excellent cover of the wall their enemies would be unable to see this and could not foresee where the mighty army would sally forth against them meanwhile the vallum protected their backs life on the wall was hard this was no fertile region of Roman influence there were no locals to adopt Roman ways such as there were in the south there was no one who was prepared to come to this dark wilderness region to build their villas and farms to share the administrative load the garrison town and supply base at Corbridge were the sole example of urbanisation it's true small settlements for retired legionaries and traders made a brief appearance and civilian villages grew up under the protection of the force but this remained mainly a military area other documents found at Vindolanda give more of an insight to this one written on thin oak bark and dated to a day in May around AD 90 gives an account of the forces stationed at that fort at that time there were 751 men led by 6 centurions assigned to the fort although 470 were not actually there they were absent on other duties some were collecting the pay others were in London and some 300 and their centurion were at Corbridge this was likely to be a group of new British recruits undergoing their basic training before taking their place in patrolling the wall there was a further small group of 46 or so with the legate the region's chief administrator who was either in York or London at the time that left only 270 or so actually holding the fort in case of local hostilities but they were lucky the same piece of oak records that there were only 30 on the sick list and only some of these were suffering from wounds this seems to point to minor local skirmishes rather than a major pitched battle in the area life in the forts was routine after a breakfast of porridge, bread and fruit the normal day would be taken up with duties around the fort physical fitness and weapons training were important to keep the troops in tip-top condition and there were jobs around the fort itself that had to be done supplies of food and building materials had to be gathered the workshops had to be manned and there are even records of legionaries being detailed to clean the armour of the commanding officer guard duties were not confined to the fort but covered important local resources like mines and mills or escorting trading caravans the main duties however would probably have been patrolling either along the line of the wall or to the lands to the north the local British tribes were known to be hostile and ready to attack without warning Hadrian sent over we know from the inscription 3,000 legionaries from Spain and Germany presumably to replace gaps in the ranks the regiment of Tungrians that were stationed here was 1,000 strong and for a few years it was down to 500 well that again is an example so I think it was a pretty heavy loss Hadrian had to do something the local British tribes were forbidden to gather in large numbers except at times and in places defined by treaty keeping an eye on them to be sure they were obeying this treaty would have been a major part of the duties for the soldiers stationed on and near the wall Hadrian's wall was finished life had settled into a routine but again all this was to change Emperor Antoninus Pius who replaced Hadrian after his death ordered a fresh assault on the northern clans in 138 AD this was a highly successful campaign and pushed back the northern tribes a new wall the Antonine wall was built further north from the Forth to the Clyde but they kept the bath houses inside these forts perhaps a sign of greater hostilities in this region it also had more forts than Hadrians which also perhaps goes to show they were experiencing greater danger meanwhile back at Hadrian's wall the evidence shows signs of evacuation the vallum mounds were breached and the ditches filled in the garrisons in the forts were reduced to caretaker size even the gates at the mile castles were taken off their hinges the frontiers of Rome had been pushed further into the lands of the barbarians but not for long 17 years later the brigantes revolted and within 6 months Hadrian's wall had been reoccupied and its defences hardened in the face of this new threat this pattern of events expansion followed by retreat was to be repeated at least once more in the following 20 years until the wall ceased to be an effective frontier marker for the once proud empire one of the things you've got to bear in mind about Hadrian's wall is that it was a typical multi-million pound government job it was built and completed in Hadrian's lifetime a few years later Hadrian then dies what happens to this huge vast project short answer is it's abandoned it's boarded up and they go back into Scotland for a while under Antoninus Pius and for 10 odd years it must have just been mothballed down here now as it happens they find they don't want to stay in Scotland for a variety of reasons and the wall is then reoccupied and it is more or less maintained with a few hiccups to the end of the Roman period of rule on all the forts there are signs of destruction from time to time and rebuilding but the destruction it's difficult to say whether that's destruction at enemy hands or whether it's destruction because the Roman soldiers had gone away and the natives had gone and pinched what they could now the story is of decline records speak of the British tribes crossing the wall in force about 180 AD it looks like they were able to burst through the centre without opposition but the rest of the wall was untouched it was after this that Roman troops were pulled back towards Rome from Britain to help with Claudius Albinus' attempt to become emperor and the British tribes saw their chance there were great battles and much destruction shortly after this a various lupus was sent from Rome to buy off these northern tribes it seems that Roman money was still highly valued by the Britons for the next 200 years or so there was peace on the wall there are signs of refurbishment and rebuilding but by 400 AD the final garrison had gone the wall was left deserted to the elements and the sky the slow process of decay and destruction now began the Anglo-Saxons replaced the Romans and while a few of their objects had been found on the wall in the main these newcomers passed it by maybe they feared the might and power that had raised this set of marking stones perhaps some descendants of the soldiers continued to live in the forts or their associated civilian settlements, we cannot say they withdraw their authority from Britain, tell the Britons to look after themselves, and you get chaos you get the breakdown of law and order and with the breakdown of law and order the breakdown of trade, and with that no way can you maintain this huge population up here people drift away, a few people would stay on, subsistence farming and so on, and then eventually you get the Anglo-Saxons, the Vikings and all this lot coming in and the wall ceases to exist only at Vindolanda has any post-Roman inscription been found and that dates to about only 500 AD but the wall had not been forgotten and accounts by writers of the time after the Romans have persisted to the present day most notable is that of the venerable Bede, who in about 730 AD gave a good description of it, he said it was then 8 feet wide and 12 feet high, this account may well have resulted from his own observations, as his monastery at Jarrow lay close to the eastern end of the wall but when it came to dating the wall, or to its purpose he depended more on local garbled tales he assigned a date some 250 years too late for its building and presented the erroneous view that it had been built to keep out the Picts and the Scots this view has continued until the present day through the centuries that followed the wall became a quarry the stone won so hard from the ground by the hands of Roman legionaries was easy pickings for those building churches houses, farms or even simple dry stone walls people begin to settle in here again you then get the enclosure movement and people create these fields they needed field boundaries Roman sites again, wonderful, Hadrian's Wall look at all this stone, all the field walls around here are built out of the stone from these Roman remains in the 18th century for example, after Bonnie Prince Charlie had been through creating panic, they decided to make sure that communications were better so they built a new road a few years later between Newcastle and Carlow and when they got to the Hadrian's Wall area they said, ah, just what we need to make a road and nobody thought twice about it stones were carried miles and other raiders came to plunder the once proud wall King John in 1201 sent men to dig for treasure they found only stone local brigands in the 17th century used housesteads as their base from which to range out over the local countryside and the local gentry when they wanted to decorate and adorn their great houses with inscriptions and sculpture, came to the wall to join in with the destruction it was 300 years after the excavations of King John that the age of serious observations began accounts from the 16th century still prove a useful, if not valuable record of the state of the wall at that time in fact, it was not until the writings of the Reverend John Hodgson in 1840 that the wall, its forts and vallum were correctly attributed to Hadrian and his time this was also the time of excavation along the wall site reports record the continuing decline and disappearance of this once proud frontier marker all this was reversed mainly through the work of one man, John Clayton of Chesters during his long life 1792 to 1890 he bought many miles of the wall and several of its forts from the local landowners he then proceeded to dig up the walls, turrets mile castles and parts of the forts at Chesters and Housters he even built a museum into which he gathered his finds, that still stands today and can be visited at Chesters he set the pattern for the work that was to follow and which continues to this day it was during the years leading up to 1939 that many of the puzzles and problems about the wall its associated buildings and defences and overall purpose were solved nevertheless there are still large areas where our knowledge is imperfect there remains much to be discovered about the wall and its true place in Roman history the remains that haven't yet been excavated, and that must be about 98% of Aliens Wall hasn't yet been excavated, they're safe under the turf, protected as well as they can be by ancient monuments legislation which means that even archaeologists if they want to look at these remains have to get special permission from the Secretary of State to excavate and examine what's under the ground so it's reasonably safe now, what's left of it large swathes of the wall have now passed into the care of the nation some parts are looked after by English Heritage others by the National Trust while still more areas are cared for by charitable trusts now the main work is conservation rather than restoration and much of the wall itself has been consolidated following the ravages of time and stone robbers the wall is photographed and drawn as it is before the stones are removed one by one they are numbered and placed to one side when the original Roman mortar is reached everything is cleaned and washed then the stones are replaced in what is thought to have been their original position using modern mortar no attempt is made to restore the wall and no new stone is added at sites like Vindolanda there are reconstructions of Roman buildings, this blend of old and new makes the site an ideal one to visit for tourists or school parties wishing to learn more about the life of Romans in Britain and on the wall this is a form of experimental archaeology actually building something on the lines of Hadrian's wall or some of these turf and timber constructions and digging ditches to Roman specifications you get an idea of how many man hours it takes and how much water you need to mix the cement and all that kind of thing and then the other point is 15-20 years on you can see what sort of status it's in whether these turf ramparts or wooden towers have started collapsing or not so you can get some idea of that aspect of it too so as you stand at Housesteads and survey where once Roman soldiers from across the empire lived and worked under the shadow of the northern threat and as you stand at Steel Brigg or on any of the cracks looking north into the same biting wind and feeling the same hail on your cheeks think of the men who worked on the wall Belgians Syrians and Moroccans pulled far from their homelands to guard this furthest flung part of a once proud and powerful empire remember too those archaeologists of the 19th century and beyond without their work Hadrian's wall would be one of Britain's and the world's lost treasures