Hadrian's Wall

Fortifications were added in three stages and when completed in 136 it stretched over 118 km from what is now Wallsend on the River Tyne to Bowness on the Solway Firth. It was protected by a series of forts (the remains of Preston fort is one of the best preserved) and a ditch, or vallum, roughly following the same line as the wall, which was itself about two metres high and two and a half metres thick.

In one stage of construction the western part of the wall consisted of turf. The finished stone wall extended about 73 miles (117 km) from near the site of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the east to that of Bowness at the head of Solway Firth in the west.

The frontier as a whole consists of a stone wall with 16 forts for troops of a fighting garrison; and fortlets at intervals of a Roman mile (hence the name, mile-castle) with two signal turrets between. A ditch lies on the north of it. On the south is the vallum, a ditch with a mound on either side of it, which served as a civil boundary and a road ran between the wall proper and the vallum. In its eastern part, from Newcastle to the River Irthing, the wall as originally designed was of stone, 10 Roman feet wide and about 15 feet high to the rampart walk, some 20 feet in total height, but from the northern Tyne westwards it is only 8 feet wide. West of the Irthing, the wall was of turf, there being no limestone for the manufacture of mortar, 20 Roman feet in width at the base, and about 12 feet in height to the rampart walk. This turf wall was soon replaced by a stone wall.

Since Camden's survey in 1599 many generations of antiquaries have been attracted to the problems of the wall. It has long been known that the frontier is not a simple work of uniform construction. The forts themselves were an afterthought, Chesters, for example, being built over the filled-in ditch and demolished turret. Several sectors of the wall, including mile-castles, turrets, bridge-abutments, a causeway across the vallum, and the forts at Chesters, Housesteads, and Birdoswald (and at Corbridge, 4 km to the south) are in the care of the Department of the Environment.
At Chesters is the Clayton Memorial Museum with the remarkable collection of antiquities made by John Clayton (1792-1890). Housesteads fort and the adjoining stretch of wall were presented to the National Trust in 1930. Further extensive collections of Wall antiquities are in the Museum of Antiquities, Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

In 1975 a western extension of the Wall was discovered, taking it past Bowness along the southern shore of the Solway Firth. The true extent of the Wall is yet to be determined.

The ruins of the wall and some of the forts can still be seen and are preserved as a national monument.