Back on Hadrian's Wall rediscovering a love of all things Roman

Dubnonum circa 250AD

I have been thinking about what started my long love affair with history and in particular the Romans.

It began while I was in school and well over half a century later it is still with me.

Now most of the time I crawl over the lives of people from the last two centuries but it doesn’t take much to trigger that old fascination with all things Roman.

Looking back it will have been those simple line drawings from the books by R.J. Unstead and later that magical book A Valley Grows Up followed by the fine illustrations of Alan Sorrell and Ron Embleton.

A view of the Wall, drawn in 1955

At its most basic it will have been a young boy’s interest in all things military from the legions and their campaigns and slowly blossomed out to all aspects of Roman life.

It has taken me to Rome and Pompeii and from Bath to Hadrian’s Wall along with countless museums across the country always with that simple wish to discover more.

Of all these places it will be Hadrian’s Wall which is there amongst the top three.

It is partly the romance of the place, the continuing discoveries that come up out of the ground and of course the way that every time I go back there are fresh interpretations.

Only yesterday my friend Lois shared the idea that the Wall was a way of containing the troops in what one academic has called “Wolf cages.”

And of course every Roman Emperor knew that to secure his position he had to ensure the loyalty of the army, whether that came from donations, profitable military campaigns or simply keeping them busy like building Hadrian’s Wall.

When I was at school the Wall was simply a way of stopping marauding tribes from invading the peaceful bits of Britain.

Later it was seen as more a statement of power and that bold assertion that this was the end of the civilized world.

But those that lived beyond it might have much to gain from the presence of the army which made  the Wall a customs and control point supervising the cross border economy.

Wood writing tablet

Now I don’t pretend to be anything but a novice when it comes to interpretations of the Wall’s part in the complicated history of Roman Britain but it has thrown up some fascinating glimpses of life on the frontier.

Of these it must be the  the Vindolanda writing tablets which I still go back to.

They range from simple lists of military supplies to letters home, requests for clothes and the invitation to a birthday party written around AD 100 from Claudia Severa, the wife of the commander of a nearby fort, to Sulpicia Lepidina.

Now these bring me as close as I can get to the Romans and along with that blog by Lois  on Hadrian’s Wall have sent me off on a quest again.

I have dusted down the map of the Wall, dug out the books I have on its history and started looking at train timetables.

All of which just leaves me wondering on whether I shall go east to Wallsend close to where father was born or head directly north from Manchester to explore the western side.  Cumbria beware.

Pictures; the Wall as interpreted in 1955, from Looking at History, R.J.Unstead, the imaginary Roman town of Dubnonum from A Valley Grows Up, Edward Osmond, 1953 and Wood writing tablet with a party invitation written in ink, in two hands, from Claudia Severa to Lepidina, uploaded by Fæ, 1986 and  licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unportedlicense.

*New thoughts on Hadrian’s Wall and and exciting open on-line courses from universities around the world, Lois Elsden,
http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/new-thoughts-on-hadrians-wall-and-and.html

**Lois Elsden Writer, http://loiselden.com/