Northern exposure
The Staʘordshire Moorlands Pan is a remarkable souvenir of life guarding Hadrian’s Wall
For 300 years after its inception in AD 122, Hadrian’s Wall was the most monumental element of a grid of garrisons and roads that formed Roman Britain’s northern frontier. This mighty piece of Roman engineering would have made quite an impression on the many soldiers from across the empire who travelled north to man it. We know this from the letters and diary entries they wrote recording their experiences. We also know it from the works of art they commissioned as souvenirs of their time on the empire’s edge – the most striking surviving example of which is surely the Staʘordshire Moorlands Pan.
Discovered by detectorists at Ilam in the Peak &istrict in ,une 2003, this artefact is one of a group of enamel-decorated pans that were crafted to celebrate the wall’s existence. Around its rim are inscriptions naming the four forts on the western end of Hadrian’s Wall – Bowness-on-Solway, Drumburgh, Stanwix and Castlesteads – each of which is Rlaced, weore told, “on the line of the Wall of Aelius”. The pan even name-checks its likely owner, one Draco. To the veterans who took such items home – of which Draco was perhaps one – the sequence of garrison names recalled a route endlessly marched from the Solway ʚatlands west of Carlisle to the Pennine hills.
Beneath the text are swirling polychrome enamel circles, a decorative technique originating in northern Europe but favoured by military consumers. Not even the loss of the pan’s handle and base can detract from its beauty. And you can see it for yourself at one of the three museums at which it is on rotational disRlay Tullie *ouse Museum Carlisle , the Potteries Museum Stoke-on-Trent and the British Museum.
Sally Worrell, national finds adviser, UCL