Victory over the Picts was not difficult for the Roman army, but the wild mountainous terrain of Caledonia made the subjugation of this remote Highland people a formidable task.

When Emperor Hadrian visited Britain in 122 A.D. he recognised the difficulties and saw that it would be impossible to introduce the Picts to the Roman way of life. He therefore ordered the construction of a great defensive wall which would mark the northern limits of his empire and consolidate the hold on northern Britain.

"Having completely transformed the soldiers, in royal fashion, he made for Britain, where he set right many things and - the first to do so - drew a wall along a length of eighty miles to separate barbarians and Romans." (The Augustan History, Hadrian 11.1)

Hadrian's Wall did NOT act as a boundary between England and Scotland. The English and the Scots, did not settle in Britain until three centuries after Hadrian's Wall was built. In Hadrian's time the ancient race called the Scots inhabited Hibernia (now called Ireland), while the English, or more accurately the Anglo-Saxons, were a Germanic race who inhabited the central mainland of northern Europe. Hadrian's Wall does not form a boundary between England and Scotland today, most of Northumberland, England's northernmost and very Anglo-Saxon county, actually lies to the north of the Wall.

Wall and Milecastle

Birdoswald Castle

Hadrian's Wall was eighty miles long, six metres high, three metres wide and built of stone. Its defences were supplemented by a northern DITCH, a MILITARY ROAD and an earthwork called the `VALLUM' . Together these features formed a `MILITARY ZONE' which restricted the movement of people to the north and south of the wall. This military zone was a `No Go' area for armed `Barbarians'.

The defences of the Military Zone were supplemented by MILECASTLES which housed garrisons of up to sixty men. These were built at intervals of one Roman mile and between each of these stood two smaller defensive towers called TURRETS which held small garrisons of four men.

Most important of the military garrisons along the wall were of course the great FORTS, of which there were sixteen, each housing between five hundred and one thousand men. The men who occupied these forts and the other Wall defences were sometimes recruited locally, but more often than not they were brought in from some distant corner of the Roman Empire.

Soldiers garrisoned on the wall came from as far away as Spain, Switzerland, Hungary, Germania, Romania and even North Africa. The wall was a Multi-National Military Zone whose people had brought with them many different customs, languages and religions.

Civilian towns called VICUS grew up around the Roman forts. These were inhabited by women, children, craftsmen, traders and retired soldiers.  Hadrian's wall was an active military zone, a customs barrier, a line of defence and above all `a way of life'.

"Towns stood upon my length, where garrisons were laid.
Their limits to defend and; for my greater aid
With turrets I was built where sentinels were placed
To watch upon the Pict; so me my makers graced. "
Michael Drayton `Poly Oblion' (1613)

Hadrian's Wall was occupied for almost three centuries and had been the home to thousands of men, women and children. Today, Hadrian's Wall is a relic of its magnificent past, but it is still nevertheless the most impressive monument to the Roman occupation of Britain, as well as being a very important feature of the heritage of North Eastern England.

From the middle of the third century A.D., the Empire of Rome came increasingly under threat from raiding Vandals and Goths on its eastern frontiers in continental Europe. This resulted in heavy demand for Roman troops in Europe and caused a gradual depletion in the number of Roman soldiers stationed in Britain.

The movement of troops from Britain was bad news for the native Welsh speaking Britons of the Wall Country as the presence of the Roman army provided them with much needed protection from raiding Picts. By 367 A.D. the number of Roman troops on Hadrian's Wall had reached an all time low and pre-empted the so called `Barbarian Conspiracy' in which the Picts overran Hadrian's Wall in conjunction with the Scots (from Ireland) who invaded western Britain and the Saxons (from Germany), who invaded the south and east.

For a short period following the Barbarian Conspiracy the Romans managed to restore law and order to the Wall Country but by the year 399 A.D. the Roman Empire was crumbling with further trouble in Europe. The full scale evacuation of Roman troops from Roman Britain began.