Hadrian’s Wall Path

Guidebook for walking the national trail along Hadrian's wall between Bowness-on-Solway and Wallsend in Newcastle, the 84 mile route is described for walking in either direction. A World Heritage Site, Hadrian’s Wall is a famous frontier, combining striking natural landscapes with monumental remains. The guidebook is divided into 22 stages, with detailed mapping showing the Roman remains beneath your feet.

Hadrian's Wall: Inspired and Inspiring

The creation of Hadrian’s Wall was the master-stroke of Emperor Hadrian Aelius, who thereby achieved two things all rulers dream of – contemporary acclaim and lasting renown. Constructed purely for military reasons, the Wall endured as an effective frontier for almost 300 years. The cultural significance of Hadrian’s Wall, the finest surviving frontier work from any part of the classical Roman Empire, was recognised in 1987 when it was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In 2005 this designation was expanded to include the Roman frontier bounding the Rhine valley, known as the German Limes; hence the British component is now expressed as ‘Frontiers of the Roman Empire World Heritage Site: Hadrian’s Wall’.

Hadrian’s startling idea was to string out a wall from coast to coast: predominantly constructed of stone, this linear divide ran 85 miles (136km) from the tidal Tyne at Newcastle in the east to the Solway Firth, west of Carlisle. Such a monumental departure from existing Roman thinking was quite simply inspired. He may have seen, and been influenced by the great pyramids of Egypt. But he is unlikely to have known that the Emperor of China had lighted upon the same solution some four centuries earlier to quell Mongol tribes to the north of that great empire.

Hadrian came to power in AD117 and inherited a volatile situation at the northern edge of his empire. After failed attempts under Governor Agricola to conquer Scotland, Rome had established a frontier road between the Tyne and the Solway Firth. Two important forts at Corbridge and Carlisle were linked by a road now known as the Stanegate, and additional forts were built along its east–west route. Hadrian’s innovation was to replace the Stanegate with a physical frontier – a defensible line of control that interrupted the erratic movement of the Pictish tribes which so troubled the Romans. As Hadrian’s biographer put it ‘the Wall was to separate the Romans from the barbarians’ (the term ‘barbarian’ comes from the Greek for a primitive and uncivilised people).

The Wall appeared to be the perfect ‘grand scheme’ to enhance Hadrian’s standing at the helm of the Roman Empire. However, as the only stone-built frontier in the history of the empire, it also represented a seismic change in thinking – as the usual timber structures of an expanding empire were replaced by a permanent frontier that suggested a policy of inward-looking containment. If the Wall was a tacit acknowledgement of the end of the hitherto limitless expansion of the Roman Empire, this was not the intention of the flamboyant Hadrian. To him, the Wall was a statement of authority, not an admission that the empire had reached its limit (‘limit’ comes from the Roman word ‘limes’, meaning ‘a frontier’).

Although the frontier played an active part in Roman life for nearly three centuries, once Roman jurisdiction fell away the Wall lost its meaning too. Remarkably the Wall remained largely intact for the next 1000 years, mainly because local buildings were predominantly timber-built. Its only enemy was the damp northern climate and the occasional monastic ‘borrowing’. Later, when most buildings came to be made of stone, it was open season on the long-defunct frontier, and farmers and house-builders took the stones in cart-loads.

That there is any trace of the Wall remaining today is largely due to the enlightened and prompt action of one man, John Clayton of Chesters, whose estate was located some five miles north of Hexham, just west of Chollerford, where the Wall crossed the North Tyne. At the end of the 18th century Clayton’s father began to turn his country seat into a fashionable stately park, and in the process virtually flattened Roman Cilurnum. However, upon inheriting the estate in 1822 Clayton began reversing this process: his classical education served him particularly well, for he realised the importance of the Roman site in the grounds and developed a passion for the frontier with which it was associated. Clayton then proceeded to acquire farm after farm along the line of the Wall as far as the Cumberland border (present day Cumbria), thus abruptly ending the thoughtless pilfering of Wall-stone.