Museum & Birdoswald

The first of today’s destinations was the Roman Army Museum. This is a ticket that we’d bought in advance as a joint ticket when we visited Vindolanda two days ago, as they are run by the same people. As we wanted to get on with stuff we arrived at around two minutes after ten, so were pretty much the first people in.

The museum basically recaps a lot of what we’ve learned over the last week about the Roman Empire in Britain. They have various artefacts from sites along the wall, including an impressive collection of brooches. They also have a 20-minute film which shows every half hour, so we stopped to watch that. It’s in 3D (remember that?), and covered the building of the wall, and everyday life for the soldiers who manned it.

The brooch box

Infantryman

Cavalryman

A manuballista - a small artillery weapon that fired large arrows

After a cup of tea, we backtracked a few miles and went to Birdoswald. This is another fort on the wall, and whilst the ruins aren’t all that, it’s on the longest stretch of the wall that is still standing.  The Roman fort was known as Banna. It was manned by a cohort of Dacians (modern-day Romania). It also has evidence of the use of one of the granaries after the Romans had departed. In the 12th century there is evidence that one "Radulpho de Bordesald" was witnessing charters and granting lands around the site, and this is presumably how it got its modern name. It remained farmland, with a typical Bastle house built on the site, with defences against local bandits known as reivers. In the 19th century, in what sounds like a very familiar story, the site was excavated by its owner, Henry Norman, to expose the ruins we can see today. The farm remained in use until the late 20th century. 

Roman inscription

The granary

A section of wall

More wall

This about wraps up our Hadrian’s Wall-related adventures. We’re moving on from Longtown tomorrow to go and stay in the Lake District for a couple of nights, then we start our journey south to get to Gloucestershire.