Hadrian’s Wall

Ross Leckie is on the march

Was it white? some scholars think that Hadrian had his great wall, all 73 miles of it and the largest monument the Romans ever built anywhere, whitewashed. as a piece of propaganda, and as a statement of Roman power, that would have made it even more visible, intimidating and astonishing.

Hadrian’s Wall needs no such embellishment, however. Even today, when you see, say, the section along the Whin sill crags undulating on into the distance, soaring high on its Northumbrian moor, you literally catch your breath. Even almost 2,000 years after it was built (between ad122 and about ad132), and although most of it is no more, it’s prodigious, portentous, pregnant —a thing of wonder and of marvel.

To walk its course is to feel the full force of the Roman Empire at its best. as Virgil put it so memorably: tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento; hae tibi erunt artes; pacisque imponere morem, parcere subiectis, et debellare superbos. (You, O Roman, govern the nations with your power, and remember; These will be your arts; to impose the ways of peace, To show mercy to the conquered and to subdue the proud.)

Even so, as you walk the wall, you can’t help but ask the big question: why was it built? Were rebarbative scots or Picts really such a threat to this edge of the empire? If it was defensive, why did Hadrian’s successors soon abandon it (in ad142) for the new antonine Wall between the Forth and Clyde? Was it a grand customs barrier? Or was it largely a vanity project for the irrepressible emperor, an enigmatic and extraordinary man?

after 10 days walking it from coast to coast, that last is my view of the wall’s genesis, but perhaps I’m coloured by a remarkable novel, which I re-read during my walk, Marguerite Yourcenar’s Memoirs of Hadrian.

Whatever guidebooks do or don’t say, a not-to-be-missed place is, for me, the fort and the Clayton Collection at Chesters, not least in homage to the great antiquarian John Clayton (1792–1890). Even among the unjust apportionments of history, Clayton deserves to be better known.

Then, for its ambient beauty alone, the section from Milecastle 33, where the B6318 moves away from the wall, along sewingshields Crags and on past the Housesteads fort to the quarry at Cawfield Crags, is enormously uplifting. The engineering is phenomenal. Could we match that now?

Finally, I wouldn’t miss sitting or lying near the wall by the River Irthing and reflecting. The setting is idyllic and the peace profound.

I had no low points. The least enjoyable was the slog along the flat, wall-less public road to where the wall ended at Bownesson-solway, but, as always along the entire wall, there were felicities. One is people. Only the most determined misanthrope could avoid meeting and talking to other walkers.

as I approached Carlisle, I spent a happy hour walking and conversing with a group

‘Was it defensive? Was it a grand customs barrier? Or a vanity project for the irrepressible emperor?

of nuns. I met a Venezuelan, a teacher of yoga, who lives in Miami. I walked for half a day alongside a couple from Iceland. I shared an afternoon and then a pub supper, as we were staying in the same B&B, with a former private secretary to the Prince of Liechtenstein.

Another reason to walk Hadrian’s Wall is to emulate William Cobbett’s Rural Rides and gain a precious perspective on the state of the nation. In, for example, the postindustrial wastelands of Newcastle or passing small, family dairy-farms in the lush west, you win an idea of what we were and are—and of what we might become.

There are many reasons to walk Hadrian’s Wall and they’re all good ones.

Ross Leckie The wall goes ever on and on: Hadrian’s Wall is particularly well preserved in the stretch at Walltown Crags near Hexham