Hadrian's Wall

Timeline

1. AD 117

   Accession of Hadrian

   Following the death of Trajan, Hadrian became the 14th Roman emperor and replaced expansionist policy with a doctrine of fixed frontiers across the empire

2. AD 122

   Construction begins

   Hadrian visited Britannia in person and ordered the building of a 117.5-kilometre stone frontier from the Tyne to the Solway, marking the project's official start

3. c. AD 132

   Main sections completed

   Soldiers of Legio II, VI and XX, acting as their own stonemasons, completed the principal sectors of the wall together with most milecastles and major forts

4. AD 142

   Antonine Wall built

   Hadrian's successor Antoninus Pius pushed the frontier 160 kilometres north and built the turf-and-timber Antonine Wall across central Scotland

5. c. AD 160

   Return to Hadrian's line

   The Antonine Wall was abandoned and Hadrian's Wall once again resumed its role as the effective northern boundary of Roman Britain

6. AD 410

   Roman withdrawal

   With the collapse of Roman authority in Britannia the wall was progressively abandoned and slowly turned into a long quarry for local medieval communities

7. 1746

   Wade's military road

   General George Wade built his military road, now the B6318, immediately south of the wall to support the suppression of the Jacobite rebellions, reusing huge quantities of Roman stone

8. 1830s

   Clayton's preservation

   The antiquarian John Clayton used his personal fortune to buy stretches of land around Chesters and Housesteads, halting further quarrying and initiating systematic excavation

9. 1987

   UNESCO inscription

   In December the wall was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, later expanded into the transnational Frontiers of the Roman Empire serial property

10. 2003

    National Trail opens

    The 84-mile (135-kilometre) Hadrian's Wall Path opened as a designated National Trail and now sees over 10,000 thru-hikers per year

11. 2023

    Sycamore Gap felling

    In September the iconic lone sycamore at Sycamore Gap was illegally felled, shocking the nation, although new shoots have since emerged from the stump

Detailed History

The history of Hadrian's Wall begins with the death of Emperor Trajan in AD 117 and the accession of Hadrian as the 14th Roman emperor. Reversing his predecessor's policy of expansion, Hadrian adopted a doctrine of fixed frontiers, the limes, designed to consolidate rather than extend the empire. In 122 he travelled to Britannia in person and, alarmed by unrest in the north, ordered the construction of a great stone barrier running 117.5 kilometres from Segedunum at Wallsend in the east to Bowness-on-Solway in the west. The work was carried out over roughly a decade by soldier-masons of Legio II Augusta, Legio VI Victrix and Legio XX Valeria Victrix. The original specification called for a wall about 3 metres thick, but the central sector was soon reduced to 2.4 metres, and the western section beyond the River Irthing was first built in turf and timber and only later rebuilt in stone. Every Roman mile the engineers placed a small fortified gateway called a milecastle, with two intermediate watchtowers between each pair, and every six kilometres a major garrison fort such as Housesteads, Chesters or Vindolanda, each holding 500 to 1,000 auxiliaries. When Hadrian died in 138 his successor Antoninus Pius pushed the frontier 160 kilometres north and built the Antonine Wall in 142, but this was abandoned by 160 and Hadrian's Wall again became Rome's effective northern boundary. During the late 4th century Roman troops were progressively reduced, and after the Roman withdrawal from Britain in 410 the structure became a vast quarry for medieval farms, churches and monasteries across Northumberland and Cumbria. In 1746 General George Wade built his military road, now the B6318, directly south of the wall to suppress Jacobite rebellions, reusing enormous quantities of dressed Roman stone. From the 1830s the antiquarian John Clayton used his private wealth to buy up wall-land near Chesters and Housesteads, halting demolition and undertaking systematic excavation. In the 20th century guardianship passed largely to English Heritage and the National Trust. In December 1987 the wall was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and in 2005 the Upper German-Raetian Limes in Germany was added, followed in 2008 by the Antonine Wall in Scotland, creating the transnational serial property known as the Frontiers of the Roman Empire.

Cultural Significance

Hadrian's Wall stands as the supreme symbol of Rome's shift from expansion to consolidation and as the largest, most fully preserved Roman frontier in the western empire. Its 1987 UNESCO inscription was the foundation of an unprecedented experiment in shared heritage: in 2005 the Upper German-Raetian Limes was added, and in 2008 the Antonine Wall followed, creating the transnational Frontiers of the Roman Empire serial property, the first cross-border serial inscription of its kind. Although the wall does not mark the modern Anglo-Scottish border, which lies further north, it has powerfully shaped British imagination of a north-south divide, the half-mythical line between Roman civilisation and untamed Caledonia. Its cultural afterlife is unusually rich: Rudyard Kipling drew on it in Puck of Pook's Hill, Rosemary Sutcliff used it as the spine of The Eagle of the Ninth, and George R. R. Martin has acknowledged that the Wall in A Song of Ice and Fire was inspired by his own visit. The lone tree at Sycamore Gap, famous from Kevin Costner's 1991 Robin Hood, became one of Britain's most photographed trees, and its deliberate felling in September 2023 prompted a national outcry. The 84-mile Hadrian's Wall Path, opened in 2003, is now among the country's most beloved long-distance trails.

Architectural Details

Hadrian's Wall is a linear curtain fortification 117.5 kilometres (80 Roman miles) long, running in a continuous arc from Wallsend in the east to Bowness-on-Solway in the west. The original specification called for a wall about 3 metres thick and 4 to 5 metres tall, built mainly of locally quarried basalt, sandstone and limestone, using rubble and lime mortar between two faces of dressed stone in the technique known as opus caementicium. The route exploits terrain to a remarkable degree, particularly along the Whin Sill escarpment, where the natural cliff served as a free upward extension of the rampart. The defensive system was conceived in three layers: an outer northern ditch up to 8 metres wide and 3 metres deep, the curtain wall itself, and on the south a great parallel earthwork called the Vallum, a flat-bottomed ditch flanked by two earth mounds and totalling 36 metres across, the etymological ancestor of the English word wall. At intervals of one Roman mile a milecastle, typically 8 by 6 metres internally, housed eight to 32 soldiers, while two turret towers stood between each pair for signalling and shelter. Every six kilometres a major fort was set astride or behind the wall, organised around a central principia with barracks, granaries, bath-houses and latrines on a uniform plan; Housesteads survives as the textbook example.