John Wykeham Archer

“ A little west of Monk Hill, the vallum crosses the turnpike road, travelling on the north side of it to Burgh on the Sands, where there are traces of another station, within which are the church and the churchyard, the latter having yielded to the sexton’s spade numerous fragments of urns, lachrymatories, and a few inscribed stones, but none of them affording any reference to the cohort by which the station was garrisoned. The church is built so as to adapt it to the purpose of refuge and defence in border strife. ”

“ Their fortifications, their aqueducts, their theatres, their fountains, all their public works, bear the grave, solid, and majestic character of their language, while our modern labours, like our modern tongues, seem but constructed out of their fragments. ”

“ In future ages, when the science of war shall have changed, how few traces will exist of the labours of Vauban or Coehorn, while this wonderful people’s remains will even then continue to interest and astonish posterity! ”

“ From the village the wall follows the river by a north-west course, through a field called Long Wall, the vallum running in a line with the road. A quantity of stones in Beaumont churchyard, which the wall reaches, seems to mark the site of some building which stood here apart from the wall itself; and it is surmised of greater magnitude than a mile castle. ”

“ These stones are most likely the remains of a watch tower which gave name to the site. At Dykesfield, probably so named from the works, a small altar was found, and where the wall descends towards Burgh Marsh, quantities of stone, together with ashes and coal appear, and from these indications, together with some difference between this tract and the surrounding soil, it is surmised that here had been a small station. From Dykesfield even the “trail” is lost. Here the vallum ends, and for the further course of the wall, the ploughman is our only guide. ”

“ When wending through the wild and unfrequented parts of his journey, he will not fail to find matter for reflection, while he bethinks him of the powerful material genius of the people by whom these regions were once thickly populated, and he will be ready to say, with Scott, in the words which he puts into the mouth of his hero in “Guy Mannering,” “What a people! ”

“ The buxom but treacherous Meg, the landlady of Scott’s story, is drawn from one Margaret Carrick, whose gravestone, the inscription nearly obliterated, being headed Mumps Hall, I found lying face downwards in the churchyard of Upper Denton, near Burdoswald.
Returning to the Shaws we wiled away the time till dinner at quoits, being not a little entertained by the apparition of a meek old man
The Piper.who played the Northumbrian pipes to the good old tunes of “Fenwick o’ Bywell,” “Kittle her Chin with a Barley Straw,” “Caller Fair,” “Wylam awa’,” “Penton loaning,” &c. ”