Jessie Mothersole

“ I love the Wall for the way in which it overcomes obstacles, never swerving from its determination to keep to the highest at all costs, while the Vallum allows itself to be turned aside to the south by even such a little obstacle as Down Hill.
And I love the Wall for the sense of strength which it gives, even in its present battered condition, a sense of strength and solidity which no number of ditches and earth mounds could ever give. Earth mounds (of a sort) can be made by earth-worms; for stone walls it takes men! ”

“ GRINSDALE TO DRUMBURGH
To follow the Wall to Kirkandrews, I had to cross the village street, and pass through a farm-yard gate beside a letter-box. This brought me out into meadows. Such a beautiful golden meadow was the first which came, with dark-grey guinea-fowls making a foil to the buttercups, and giant trees here and there. In the shade of one large chestnut-tree, a handsome lad was shearing sheep. ”

“ I think I love this view to the north, bare as it is, even more than the one to the south, over the fertile Tyne valley.
An ideal Wall-day is a day of mingled cloud and sunshine, with a bit of a breeze, and yet not enough to make it "windy;" a day when heavy cumulus {111} clouds marshal themselves along the horizon, and then spread, and scatter, and form again, always threatening to do something great, but always thinking better of it; a day when it is perhaps raining heavily over Barcombe, or over Tindale Fell, and rainbows are chasing each other across the rolling fells to the south ”

“ On such a day one is inclined to feel that the lot of a Roman sentry on the Wall was to be envied, until one remembers the other side of the picture—the drenching rain, the bitter wind, the snowdrifts, to say nothing of the constant sense of the need for vigilance, and the actual encounters with an unscrupulous enemy.
Here at Sewingshields we are farther from shops and civilization than at any other point on the Wall. It is 5 miles to Haydon Bridge, the nearest post-office. ”

“ I love the Wall because I can picture it, manned by the soldiers of the cohorts, as a living thing, all eyes and ears; a link from sea to sea; a chain of forts and turrets threaded on a single string!
And I love it because of its plain straightforward purpose. No one ever doubts what it was meant to be or to do; whereas the object of the Vallum is still to some extent a matter of conjecture, over which wordy battles may be fought. ”

“ The fact that the Wall is the mightiest antiquity of Britain is not of itself sufficient to account for the glamour it sheds. We must seek a more subtle reason; and the true {2} source of its attraction is that it stands for a great ideal.
As we follow it in its unfaltering course from sea to sea, and mark how bravely it has withstood the ravages of time and the hand of the destroyer, it dawns upon us that it stands for something permanent, something eternal, something in the very nature of man which can never die. ”

“ The Wall-ditch runs along the fields, in splendid condition, down to the valley of the Tipalt. The path lies along the north margin of the ditch. It led me over a fence at the bottom of the second field into a beautiful little tree-filled glade, with great swelling undulations in the surface of the ground as it sloped rapidly down to the Tipalt. At the bottom of this glade Thirlwall Castle came suddenly into view, and I must confess I was greatly struck by the beauty of its situation. ”

“ Are we just beginning to learn that the true "walls" which can alone preserve any nation or empire from destruction or decay, and which do indeed ensure its stability, are not walls of brick or stone, not armies, Dreadnoughts, aeroplanes nor submarines, but great moral and spiritual qualities, high aspirations, an ideal of unity which views the whole world as one, faced by one common enemy, and sees that, with the nation as with the individual, true greatness consists in humility and willingness to serve? ”

“ The effect when I saw it was heightened (if such a thing were possible) by the marvellous clothing of gorse, glorious clusters of gold, as if Nature herself desired to do honour to this great achievement.
From the top of the next hill the Vallum can be seen to perfection, running up the slope of the hill facing us; nowhere is it better. Soon after this, the distant hills come into view, over the tops of which we are to follow the Wall.
Just before reaching the eighteenth milestone, another mile-castle can be very distinctly traced. ”

“ The ditch of the Vallum and its triple mounds are very clearly marked on the right of Wade's Road, and the Wall-ditch is very plainly visible on the left. The low rays of the sun cast shadows which emphasize the form, and all round the eye can follow wave upon wave of undulating ground, right into the dim blue distance. ”

“ The path leads through a wicket-gate right into and along the ditch, and brings us to the Wall. It is a magnificent piece of Wall! It is 7 feet high, with nine courses of facing-stones in place on both sides, and it must be 60 feet long at least. Yew-trees, hawthorns, oaks and nut-stubs are growing on the top. Two altars lean against the north face. I climbed the Wall, with religious care not to disturb a stone, and found myself standing above the first turret we have come to, and perhaps the finest there is to see. ”

“ For those who do not care to walk all the way, and who wish to see a great deal of the Wall in a short time, the George Inn at Chollerford makes a delightful centre. It stands on the bank of the North Tyne, with well-kept gardens sloping down to the water's edge, just where a five-arched stone bridge crosses the river. The bridge dates from 1771, the year when every bridge over the Tyne except the one at Corbridge was swept away by heavy floods. ”

“ On my left, crossing the Solway, was the Annan Railway Bridge, which had just been condemned as unsafe, and Criffel showed in a violet haze beyond it.
I thought from the sands I could best distinguish the probable site of the Roman fort, and I believe that I did succeed in identifying the western rampart, and the south-west and north-west angles.
Bowness is a quiet little place, standing high up above the Solway, with steep cobbled streets and many clay houses, "whose walls," said an old inhabitant to me, "are as thick as my stick is long." ”

“ It is a whinstone quarry, needless to say, for it is busy cutting a large slice out of the basaltic ridge on which the Wall has clung for so many miles. I had previously been puzzled by the appearance of the Cawfields Quarry, which is quite a landmark for miles, making a rich yellow patch in the landscape. If basalt is a dark blue-grey stone, how can it make a yellow patch? ”

“ Vindolanda is supposed to be one of Agricola's forts on the Stanegate.
The walls, gateways and ditches can be readily made out, also the hypocaustal pillars of a large building to the west of the fort. I sat on the outer wall of the fort to make a sketch of Chesterholm in the evening light, with heathery Barcombe beyond, and the Long Stone standing up against the sky. No one knows the age of the Long Stone. ”

“ Soon I came to Walbottle Dene House, a farm-house on the right, in the front garden of which are the splendid remains of the northern gateway of a mile-castle, the first mile-castle to be seen uncovered. The course of the road was altered here to avoid injury to this mile-castle after it had been excavated. The huge stones can be easily seen by looking over the low garden wall. ”

“ The next farm-house is Carrawburgh, and near here lay the Roman fort of PROCOLITIA. A mile-castle is seen on the left just before we come to the fort.
There is very little indeed of Procolitia to be seen on the surface. The famous well of the water-goddess, Coventina, is merely a patch of rushes railed round, and too wet even to be examined. It is just possible to make out the walls and gateways of the fort under the grass. The great Wall joined on to the north wall of the fort. The Vallum curves round to the south to avoid it. ”

“ Mattresses are not the sort of thing one leaves about by mistake, or drops when one is out for a walk. I was obliged to go on without solving the problem.
Under the wide stone railway-bridge I passed next, and so came to the engine-sheds mentioned by Dr. Bruce. I crossed a footbridge, with steam from the engine-sheds puffing all round me, and so came to a stile which brought me out into the open fields which lie above the Eden—and here once more is Wall!
The left bank of the river is very high and precipitous, while the right bank is a gentle slope. ”

“ But as for the Roman mile-castle, they also had never heard of it; so we went back to the Wall, and there, quite clearly discernible, it lay, between the line of the Wall and the Hare Hill cottage; and though nothing but grassy mounds could be seen, still it was something to have a "castle" of any sort in one's garden, so the proud owner thought! He told me he was a Tynemouth man, and had come to stay at Lanercost Temperance Hotel many years ago, when paralyzed after a bad smash-up in a railway accident; and there, in the country peace and quiet, he had learned to walk again. ”

“ In the way in which heartsease has (apparently) displaced stinging-nettles here, on the site of many a bloody contest, let us see a symbol and a prophecy of the displacement of human hatred and rivalry by the spirit of fellowship and love.
But wait! I am forgetting. The "bloody contests" are a myth. Professor Bosanquet trenched the hollow in 1898 and proved it to be an ancient quarry. And so it is marked on the new Ordnance Survey!
Now for the first time it was possible to walk along the top of the Wall, feeling that it was the very structure built by the Romans, and not a mere mound. ”

“ An old man appeared, with a pot of green paint in one hand and a paint-brush in the other.
"You have come to the right man," said he.
Then, with a dramatic wave of the paint-brush, "The Roman Wall passed by this very doorstep." He gave me full instructions as to how to find it farther on:
"Follow along the road to Bo'ness till you come to a gooter across the road, then turn to the left up a grassing-field, and go on till you come to an elbow. Turn to the right, and you come to a high lift; over that lift you'll find the Wall." ”

“ In the church at Chollerton, about 11⁄2 miles up the North Tyne from Chollerford, the columns of the south side of the nave bear evidence of Roman origin, and no one who is following the Wall should miss seeing them. They are round columns, each consisting of a single stone, and are of the same diameter and general character as portions of shafts found at Cilurnum. It is more than likely that they were stolen from the ruined fort to occupy their present position, and that to this they owe their perfect preservation. ”

“ Here the Vallum is clearly visible in a field on the left. The foundations of the Wall could long be seen in the road on the rise of the hill towards Walwick, but I doubt if they can often be seen now. "A good surface for cars" is made so that it does not easily wash off, even in thunder-showers!
I did not see them myself; but I have since been told that, though the north face is very seldom seen, the south facing-stones can be made out just at the south edge of the road, unless too much covered by the wayside grass. ”

“ Black Pasture Quarry is also on the right. Here the Romans obtained much of their sandstone for the Wall, and for the Roman bridge at Chesters. Now there are mountains of broken fragments, covered more or less with a grassy growth, and shadowed by large trees, with paths winding in and out. It is a queer-looking place altogether, and worth a visit.
Just about here the Wall crosses the road from right to left; and before we reach the twentieth milestone, a good strip of it is seen in a field on the left belonging to Plane-trees Farm. ”

“ As I travelled south in the train, I remembered what Hutton has said: that the Wall "would exhibit its proud head many thousand years"; but that the mounds of the Vallum, "being native earth, would continue to the last trump." ”

“ In the village of Banks, or Banks Hill, I saw an Inn, called "The Traveller's Rest," and thought of tea, but, alas! there was no one at home. The Banks Burn crosses under the road at the foot of a little hill beyond the Inn, and in a field this side of the burn, there can be seen a great piece of the Wall with bushes growing out of it. ”

“ Their incentive was the love of an ideal. Each had a vision of stability and unity; but whereas Agricola's direct endeavour was to absorb and Romanize the whole island, Hadrian chose to consolidate rather than to extend. In helping the Britons south of the Wall line to keep out the raiding Caledonians, and encouraging them {4} to settle down, undisturbed, to peaceful agricultural and industrial pursuits, he hoped that in time the leaven of this higher ideal would spread north to the farthest limits of the island. ”

“ Having this clue, it is easy to recognize in the pasture to the south of the road the buried gateways and ramparts. The ground to the north was under grass for hay when I was there. When it was being dug up many years ago, the foundations of elaborate buildings were found, and the hypocausts for heating them.
The picturesque Halton Tower, which lies immediately {64} to the south of the fort, is the one remaining tower of the thirteenth-century castle, built of Roman stones from the Wall and the fort. The present owner is evidently a great lover of flowers. ”