WALLS

The Antonine Wall, scotland

IT MAY HAVE the inspired ‘The Wall’ in George RR Martin’s Game of Thrones fantasies, but Hadrian’s Wall wasn’t a closed, impassable border. And it wasn’t even the most northerly wall built by the Romans.

50 years before Hadrian consolidated a frontier in AD122, Roman Legions led military campaigns deep into Scotland, building camps as far north as the Moray Firth. But needed elsewhere, they gradually withdrew to the new wall. When Antoninus Pius became Emperor, he ordered the re-invasion of Caledonia and commissioned a second wall 100 miles further north in AD142, from the Clyde to the Firth of Forth (the narrowest and most defensible line across the ‘neck’ of the country). His 39-mile

Antonine Wall consisted of three-metre turf ramparts and wooden palisades. As with its more famous cousin, forts and watch towers were built at regular intervals along the way.

Its purpose, like that of Hadrian’s Wall, wasn’t purely military. It controlled trade with Caledonii tribes. But relations were seldom rosy and the Antonine Wall was by no means a prettified picket fence, as grisly ‘lilia’ pits near Falkirk reveal. Filled with sharpened stakes, they were the Roman equivalent of barbed wire. Its time as a Roman frontier was short-lived. Nearly 25 years after it was built, its defenders retreated to Hadrian’s Wall.

Today, only its earthworks remain.

WALK THE WALLS: Turn to Walk 24 for a fourmile route around the Antonine Wall. All 84 miles of the Hadrian’s Wall Path take about six days to walk. Find full details about walking the trail at www.nationaltrail.co.uk/ hadrians-wall-path

“The Antonine Wall consisted of three-metre turf ramparts and wooden palisades, with forts & watch towers placed at regular intervals along the way.”