Hadrian's Wall: Wallsend to Bowness-on-Solway

The wall's eastern end is a fort on the Tyne. The wall was begun in AD 122, and about 127 it was extended 4 miles east to reach Segedunum; the 2nd-century garrison was Cohors II Nerviorum. In 1884 it disappeared under terraced housing. Today the excavated foundations lie beside a museum that opened in June 2000, with a reconstructed Roman bathhouse and an observation tower over the site. The name Wallsend simply means the east end of the wall.

訪問のヒント: Segedunum Roman Fort, Baths and Museum: remains, reconstructed bathhouse, museum and tower.

Chesters began as a cavalry fort whose walls projected north of the Wall. Excavation showed a change of plan here: Turret 27a had been built first, on the site of the later fort, and had to be demolished. The fort guarded Chesters Bridge, and its massive abutments still stand across the North Tyne. Its baths are considered the most impressive on the Wall. John Clayton dug the fort out after inheriting the estate in 1832, and the museum of his finds opened in 1903.

訪問のヒント: Fort remains, bath house, bridge abutments and the 1903 museum of John Clayton's finds.

Housesteads shows the plan changing in mid-build. The wall began in AD 122 without forts, then forts were added, so a stone fort was built around AD 124. The wall here follows the cliffs of the Whin Sill. With no running water, the garrison relied on rainwater cisterns. One of the best-preserved stone latrines in Roman Britain survives, and in the civilian village the so-called "Murder House" held two skeletons. From 205 or 208 the garrison was Cohors I Tungrorum, nominally 1000 strong.

訪問のヒント: The fort was given to the National Trust in 1930; the latrines and cisterns are visible among the ruins.

Vindolanda is older than the wall, sitting just south of it. Occupied from roughly 85 AD to 370 AD, it held a series of auxiliary units. Tablet 154, a troop roster, records a unit of 746 men and 10 out of action with conjunctivitis. In the 90s AD the Ninth Cohort of Batavians arrived, and most of the surviving tablets come from the archive of Cerealis.

訪問のヒント: An excavated fort and civilian settlement just south of the Wall near Bardon Mill.

Birdoswald, the fort of Banna, guarded a crossing of the River Irthing. Before building could start, trees had to be cleared and the bog drained. Here the wall began as turf, and around AD 138 it was rebuilt in stone. This is the one stretch where the stone wall did not follow the turf line, so the old turf wall's ditch stands out in the landscape. Later the south granary was twice rebuilt as a hall. Visitors can walk the excavated remains of the fort.

訪問のヒント: Walk outside along the excavated remains of the fort.

The western end is only roughly known: the wall ended a short but unknown distance west of the village of Bowness-on-Solway. The village sits on the site of the fort Maia, the second largest on the wall, overlooking the Solway Firth. Defences did not stop here: milecastles and turrets continued along the Cumbria coast. The whole wall runs 73 miles and was declared a World Heritage Site in 1987.

場所の精度: The exact end of the wall west of the village is unknown; the pin marks the village centre.