It cracked me up when you decided it was tourists that had robbed out the wall! It was more likely to have been locals who robbed the stone to build houses, churches, pubs, anything in fact, over the last 2,000 years. It is amazing that any of it is still standing actually.
I also lol at that. And the "robbing" of the ruin 's stones by locals has happened over time all over the world. If not for that, who knows how many more of the ancient world buildings there would be now? But the locals had to survive any way they could. I certainly don't blame them in any way. I would probably do exactly the same. I mostly regret when destruction was done for some "grand ideals" instead of real necessity.
Most of the wall was knocked down to build a Road "the Roman Road" to move soldiers along the border to meet the scotchies when they decided to come a visiting.
Remember that these ruins are almost two-thousand years old. As well as weathering and degradation over time, we've had centuries of people treating the wall as a kind of quarry. If they wanted to build something they could just remove the ready-cut stones
I live in Hexham which is 5 min drive from the wall. Our local Abbey has lots of stone taken from the wall. On Christmas eve I drove up to the wall and just watched the stars.. Its an amazing part of the country.
The Romans built another wall some years later further north, the Antonine Wall. It was turf on a stone foundation, but after the Romans withdrew it was mostly dismantled, and very little remains of it.
Yes, that's right. The Antonine Wall was begun in 142 AD, only 20 years after Hadrian's Wall, and was completed in 154 AD. It was abandoned a mere 8 years later in 162 AD so did not turn out to be a very good investment! The Romans then withdrew (largely) back to Hadrian's Wall where they remained until the Romans left Britain entirely by 410 AD.
The myths about Hadrians's Wall, followed by the Antonine Wall (I grew up next to it and still live beside it) being as far as the Roman Empire extended into Scotland have been recently disproved. Remains of a template design Roman fortress (complete with slave quarters) exist in Elgin in the far north of Scotland, so it is possible that they may have controlled the entire country? We will have to rely on newer technology like Leidar, to eventually reveal the hidden truth.
@@paulmellon7598 There were Roman campaigns in the northern parts of Scotland by Agricola c 79 AD (possibly reaching up to Elgin) and Septimius Severus 208-210 AD in the direction of Aberdeen but they seem to have been shortlived, sporadic and not successful in the long term. The Romans would often build elaborate fortifications even for quite short stays. Archaeology is turning up all sorts of new findings so who knows?
A fun fact, they have found Roman artifacts along the wall. Among these was a note from a Roman soldier's mum telling him to wrap up warm and a list of what she sent him, including warm underwear. It would have been cold and miserable work in that region. That may not be exact, as I read it a long time ago but more or less. Mothers don't change, do they?
When considering Roman soldiers, it's worth remembering that the legions built a LOT of the empire's infrastructure, like the amazing Roman roads. When they were on the march (away from other resources), they had to be able to build a fortified camp every night!
Yeah, the Roman's made it quite far north into Scotland but never fully conquered Scotland. It was too inhospitable very far north and the tribes were very fierce fighters.
The bus that connects the most popular visitor centres is numbered AD 122. The metro station at Wallsend is the only one in England where the signage is in two languages (English and Latin).
Hadrian's wall runs through my home town of Newcastle. I remember parts of the wall being discovered during demolition work of old housing in the 60s. The houses had previously been built from old stones and using the wall as a foundation. I've walked sections of the wall many times and it's beautiful and bleak countryside. It must have been a hard life for them.
@@da90sReAlvloc yup. Plenty of locations still exist from get carter up here as well. Everyone knows this was the inspiration for the wall in game of thrones, right?
Hi Tyler! It can be misleading to think in terms of "England" and "Scotland" in approaching this era of history. When the Romans occupied their province of Britannia in part of the "Pritanic" or Brythonic (British) Isles , the Scoti (pre-Scots) were still a tribe in the north of Hibernia, what we now call Ireland, and the Angles and Saxons (pre-English) were tribes in what are now southern Denmark and northern Germany. Great Britain and Ireland were divided into a patchwork of tribal territories/kingdoms which had no feelings of being parts of larger 'nations'. These "overseas" tribes started to spread to different areas of Great Britain only after the Roman army had to abandon Britannia in the 5th century BCE, the Scots into south-western Caledonia/Pictland and the Angles, Saxons and others into eastern 'Sub-Roman Britain'. A little later the Scandinavian 'Vikings' (an activity rather than an ethnicity), some of them later called "the Danes", joined the party and things became _really_ complicated.
@@iallso1 The Romans visited a few times between 100 and 1 BC but never stayed for long. Scouting or Raiding Parties? Pre Christian Roman artifacts have been found on Archaeological Dig sites in the South and South East and East Anglia.
@@iallso1 Sorry, meant to type CE (= AD). Of course, the army left Britannia in 410 CE, but many of the inhabitants continued to think of themselves as 'Roman' for a few generations.
I live near Colchester, a Roman military fort 2000 years ago and, today, it is still a major garrison town. Any town or city with 'chester' in it started off as a Roman military fort. We still use Roman roads too, Watlington Street is one, now called the A2. Roman roads tend to be long and straight. Hadrians Wall is a World Heritage Site owned by the National Trust. People go on walking holidays along the route. It is not done to nick anything off the wall.
I used to live in Northumberland, not far from the wall. Some of the local churchyard walls (Victorian era Church) had stones which looked like they had been "recycled" from roman structures .
That was amazing! I have heard about Hadrian's Wall, but this is the first time that I have ever seen it. It is amazing. Tying into your comment about ancient people's being smarter than we think, I agree. I think they may have, in some ways, been smarter. They had to engage with the world in ways that we no longer have to. I think that we have lost a lot of knowledge, and knowledge of all types. One of my grandmothers came from Greece. She came from a very small village in the Peloponnese. She could go out into the forested areas to the west of Chicago (Yes, there was once open land, farms and forests.) and she could walk around and find wild herbs, fruits, etc. She knew these things because where she came from it was a necessary skill. Here, it isn't necessary and we have lost that knowledge. That is just a little example of how quickly important knowledge and skill can be lost. I can only imagine what kinds of technologies, and technological knowledge we have gained, and lost, and gained again. I wish that we worked together around the globe to ensure that our knowledge was actually catalogued and kept. Maybe some day?
Hi .. Pagan Britain & other ancient peoples had a vast knowledge of Nature, its remedies & poisons. Those back then were very in tune with what Nature could give. When the catholic church took over Britain, it proceeded to burn witches & wizards. They did this because these 'heathens' didn't bow to the church. When in reality those people had their own customs & beliefs very much intertwined with Nature. A 'witch' or 'wizard' was very much someone that could help the population, rather than be someone bad or evil. They were like a 'witch doctor', someone that knew the various plants & other means for remedies to illness. These 'doctors' were renowned for living alone in the forest & living by Nature. The catholic church burned alive these people in complete ignorance to what knowledge they had & thought of them as 'satan' worshipers or somehow evil. If a person had pain, they went to the witch/wizard for help. Many times they would be given a piece of tree bark to chew & their pain would subside. It wasn't until Victorian times in England that we learned just how knowledgable those pagan 'doctors' were. The secret ingredient in that tree bark? Aspirin from the bark of the Willow tree! 🙂🏴🇬🇧
The Romans occupied Britain for 400 years. After the collapse of their empire the Saxons from Germany turned up then the Vikings and lastly the Normans in 1066 . Historian's have suggested that the Vikings forged the identity of what was to become Great Britain .
Unfortunately when they left the people forgot or lost the skills like making/building concrete structures building in brick and underfloor heating along with piped water and sewage until rediscovered/reinvented centuries later. Wine grape growing on the South Downs and making it as well.
There is a beautiful Roman Villa outside Chichester the hyoercourse- underfloor heating is still intact and amazing, the mosaic floors spectacular, the toilets...not exactky private but drained 🤣🤣and yet within 100 years of the Romans leaving our shores we were back with no drainage and no heating for hundreds and hundreds of years. ...tragic really.
When you have a standing army, you have to find something to keep them busy. Like building a wall. The Roman Army had very good engineers. When marching across hostile country, they would dig ditches and build up defences at every night stop. Look up the recent excavations at the Vindolanda Roman fort at the wall.
There are a lot of aspects of Game of Thrones (Saga of Ice and Fire) which were lifted from British history for example the war of the Roses. A lot of the Roman army were conscripted from normal people so when not at war they would have trades such as carpentry, masonry, ironmongary etc so its no suprise that they were skilled enough to build the wall. It also came in useful when the Roman army needed to build Siege Engines and bridges. As a strategy they build roads to move equipment and personnel quickly to the front lines, they were pretty much the first nation to build proper roads.
It has been established that some of the “Roman Troops “were actually conscripted from various locations in the Empire. Amongst them it is known that some of the soldiers based along the wall , came from the province called Dacia, which is now known as part of Romania and these soldiers were mainly cavalrymen for whom they found that the time they had to be based in the area of the wall was a very cold and miserable place to be, as detailed in some of the postcards sent by them to their families at home, requesting that their families should send them warm clothes and other home comforts, or imploring them to try to try to help them be deployed to other postings where it was a bit warmer. Another thing that was asked for was to be sent trade goods to barter for things that were not readily available to them.
This was one of the places I wanted to visit when I visited Britain and went there each of my first 2 visits. You should check out the history of one of the forts Vindolanda. What they've found there (and are still finding to this day) is incredible.
Archaeologists continuously dig at sites along the wall - it's a huge area from which we've gained a lot of information about Roman Britain from finds, including letters & postcards (yep: post-cards. They were made of wood.) We've read stacks of them writing back to their mums asking for warm socks, or the wife of one of the fort commanders inviting another to her birthday party! There seems to be a lot of confusion about dating our past in the USA, with any period before the 19th century being labelled "Medieval"? The two centuries from the 12thC to the 14thC are the only two centuries that one can comfortably call Medieval times... and there are probably people watching this who were taught in school that once the Romans pulled out Britain fell into the "Dark Ages" until around the 11/12 centuries. Modern archaeology has proved that Post-Romano Britain (the period after the Romans left) was anything but "Dark". Now we have access to mind-bending technology that can penetrate deep into the earth and see what lies beneath us all over Britain. It's a pretty exciting time for historians & archaeologists here and other countries - so as we discover more & more about our past the first millennium becomes clearer & clearer and certain periods are starting to be labelled differently in different countries. People who are unaware of the different time-periods (the Iron Age, Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, the Georgian, etc. etc.) are better off now simply giving the date something happened, rather than try to put it into a particular "age": because the more we discover, the more "ages" we refer to. I expect that, in another 30 or so years new time-period classifications will also spring up. Archaeology is a comparatively new discipline so it's a really, really great time to be a historian though...as I said - in 30 years time perhaps all we think we know will have expanded greatly.
Spot on Tyler. Buildings today are cheap & nasty in comparison to many historic buildings. I don’t believe we could re-create them, even if money was no object! Great vid! 👍💕
As I repaired a few houses along the wall I can tell you it was no fun trying to chisel holes in the walls to put central heating pipes in them. One house had seven feet thick walls and flag stones on the roof the size of pool tables.
Rome had a massive problem with building standards with the insula, the tenement building. Collapses were common as landlords built high and poorly. Laws on building standards were often ineffective. What folk see now are the remnants of well built temples and palaces but the vast majority of housing was of much poorer quality. It is easy to judge on what survived but in reality much was poorly built.
I grew up around Vindalanda one of the roman forts they are still pulling incredible finds from the site. A few years ago they found a skeleton of a child in one of the sleeping quarters.
Sono italiana e il Vallo Adriano non mi stupisce ,sono abituata alla grandiosità e alla bellezza delle costruzioni romane,erano costruttori e ingegneri formidabili (la manodopera era praticamente gratuita-sai,gli schiavi- e abbondante). Sai che il calcestruzzo romano è ancora il più resistente e non ne si conosce ancora l'esatta composizione? Grazie per il video,è sempre bello vedere le reazioni di chi scopre cose nuove per lui,è come guardarle con occhi diversi
I've lived in Northern Ireland all my life. Studied British and Irish History. Visited many places of historical interest, over the years and still I learn things from your video's. Brilliant 👏 👏
A barbarian was anyone who wasn't Roman I think. The Roman army was amazing they weren't just troops they were trained in aspects of engineering and craftsmanship too so they could build as they traveled.
I dunno, apparently the picts painted themselves blue like a smurf and run around with no clothes on... I can understand why the Romans said, yeah, no...
The word barbarian goes back to an Ancient Greek word "barbaros" which originally meant someone whose language was unintelligible to you so they might as well be going "bah bah bah". It annoyed the Romans no end that the Greeks called them barbarians.
@@missharry5727 Barbarian is derived from the Latin word "Barba" meaning Beard. Thus the Barbers Shop. The Spanish named the Island of Barbados - Land of the bearded men.
@@orcencart7215 sorry, the Romans borrowed the word from the Greeks to whom it simply did mean anyone who wasn't Greek. Foreigners, in other words. The Greek word goes back to at least the 5th century BC. It is unrelated to the Latin barba, which is etymologically related to the German Bart/English beard and Spanish or Italian barba. This is just as much of a coincidence as the fact that the word chat has totally different meanings in French and English (and actually has at least three meanings in English that I know of : to carry on a casual conversation, one of several related small birds, and an undersized potato.)
Again something that Europeans would be taught when we where 12 or so.. Bit i have walked the remains of this wall in the late 70's so i have a hands on experience with Hadrians Wall. Ive seen many historic sites and even legends like Arthurs round table and so on. Walked up waterfalls as a 7 year old. Loved all that stuff. Oh and got married in Scotland as a kid as well, but that's another story.. 😎
I'm glad you made the point about Hadrian's Wall not being the border between England and Scotland. At the western end, the border is about three miles north of the wall, but on the eastern side it's about 70 miles to the north. It's a common mistake many British people make to talk about Hadrian's Wall being the border.
The wall is not 3 miles south of the border on the western side, it is 10. The wall goes through the Stanwix region of Carlisle (Roman name Luguvalium)and from there it is around 10 miles to the Scottish border at Gretna. I live 1 mile north of the border in Carlisle.
6500BC - Unied Arab Emerates: The earliest recordings of concrete structures date back to 6500BC 3000 BC - Egypt and China: Egyptians used mud mixed with straw to bind dried bricks. They also used gypsum mortars and mortars of lime in the pyramids. 600 BC - Rome: The Romans weren’t the first to create concrete, but they were the first to use the material widespread. By 200 BC, the Romans successfully implemented the use of concrete in the majority of their construction. The Pantheon in Rome has the oldest concrete dome and is still the world's largest unreinforced concrete dome
I was born 200 yards south of the wall in newcastle and lived 30 years 2 miles north of the wall , but now back in the safe south of the wall thou cross over it three or four times a week without a passport or fear of those scotchies after wor sheep.
I have family in Scotland so spent a lot of my childhood visiting. One time after learning about the Romans in school when I was maybe 9 I asked to go to Hadrian's Wall on my summer visit. I stood in a rocky field and my uncle said to take a step to the right. As I did he said, "You've just crossed Hadrian's Wall". While disappointing that it wasn't this huge structure I'd been taught in school the thrill of being able to cross those stones was like time travelling to me at the time.
Our forefathers (the barbarians) didn't feel sad. What gave you that idea? Different mindset I suppose. The Caledonians, the tribes north of the wall (or the Picts as they were later called), were a Celtic people, a warrior culture, a people who love bright colours (tartan), music and tales of heroism and battle. Hadrian's wall was viewed very much as a challenge, as a taunt, and it was treated in that manner. It was constantly under attack, in one place or another. The reason, simply because it was there, and young stirks could test themselves against the wall's defenders and have something to 'brag about' later, during the long dark winter nights. They did also mount more serious attacks, and overran the wall on occasions to steal cattle, etc.
Hadrian's Wall is used as an atmospheric film location at the start of the film "Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves" with Kevin Costner and Alan Rickman. The particular place on the Wall is a well-known one called "Sycamore Gap".
I come from Carlisle just south of Hadrian's wall towards the western end. The wall here is almost gone entirely but there is still a raised mound of earth where it once stood. Towards the centre around haltwistle and Hexham are vindolanda and housteads old Roman forts. Visit Cumbria and Northumberland tourist boards for more info on the wall
The Roman wall as its called, runs from Bowness Solway in Scotland and ends in Wallsend {end of the wall on River Tyne} in North Tyneside . At Wallsend there is a Roman Fort and Museum Segedunum. Segedunum was built 122AD and abandoned in 400AD. Hadrians wall was my favourite school history trips.
Talking about "how did they build these so long ago", I'm always reminded of a bit out of Red Dwarf, where one character makes a similar remark about how they built such massive pyramids and the reply is "whips. Massive, massive whips"
I grew up near Hadrian’s wall. Lots of dissapointed tourists visit expecting to see a 30 foot high wall and only getting to see the remaining foundations. 2000 years of locals nicking stones for building material. Honestly though it’s really worth a look and vindolanda has shown some incredible finds. Do visit but don’t expect a game of thrones wall.
You can walk around the fields and lanes of Northumberland close to the wall and often find cut and dressed stones in unusual shapes. Some have weird writing and markings on them and are built into field walls or simply lying in the corner of fields where farmers have moved them to stop them being a ploughing hazard. These are almost certainly from Hadrians wall.
A few years ago I went along the Wall, by car, over a few days, with friends. All along it are Roman sites one can visit, and museums. Other commenters have commented on the ruins at Vindolanda, and the Vindolanda Museum. ( Strictly this is just south of the Wall. ) ( The original names in Roman times, like 'Vindolanda', of most of the fortresses along the Wall are known.) The boggy ground has preserved many things which should have perished. At this Museum are a great pile of Roman shoes, and even the horsehair crests from their helmets. ( Shock, horror! Traces of wool sticking to the sandals show that the Romans wore socks with them...) But the Vindolanda tablets - they're on a massive website online - are probably the greatest thing we've ever found in Britain. On bits of bark, and now only readable in the infra-red, is the everyday correspondence of the soldiers from the Roman Empire. ( If they couldn't write, they hired a scribe.) One soldier is sending underpants and socks to another. There is a daily rota. There are the supply lists, including for beer. There is the invitation from the wife of one commander to another's wife to her birthday party; mostly written by a scribe, she finishes it in her own handwriting, the first we have from a Roman woman. There is a letter from one dodgy supplier to another. There are rude comments about the natives. I don't think we have the full story about why the Wall was built. I think there was a colossal rebellion just after Trajan died, which was hushed up. A Roman Legion mysteriously disappears. ( This led to Rosemary Sutcliffe's book "The Eagle of the Ninth", which has led to two films, the second with Channing Tatum.) Maybe the Wall was intended to separate discontented tribes, not allowing them to join up.
I walked the length of the wall, Bowness-on-Solway to Wallsend, in Sept 21. Approx 90 miles over 6 days (by the time you've added small walks to hotels off the wall). For approx 25 miles at each end, there is not much to see, but the central section, that shown in the video you watched, is spectacular. The Romans made the most of the natural landscape and built atop a natural fault line that created miles of north facing cliff that added to the difficulty of breaching the wall. At both ends, where the land is flatter and more suitable for settlement and farming, the wall became a source of stone for houses, churches and such, and has long been dismantled, whereas the ditches have been ploughed until very little remains visible. Running parallel to the wall on the southern side, a military road was built to allow rapid transfer of troops should any attack be mounted.
The Romans considered anyone not under Roman rule or civilisation to be "Barbarians" but its been proven many places were very diverse with its own culture
@InsidiousBeatz In the Graeco-Roman world simply meant peoples who weren't under Greek or Roman domination. Originally, it was used by the Ancient Greeks to mean peoples who didn't speak Greek.
Hi Tyler. If you were ever a fan ig Game of Thrones, George Martin depicts Hadrians Wall perfectly by giving the northern people the tag of being 'wildlings' rather than barbarians. There was also the Antonine wall, build years before from turf and with deep ditches.
I live just down the road from that and visit often. Not had a chance to watch the video yet, but will....if it doesn't go into detail about Vindolanda, check that out. This is a roman fort they excavated. There are letters, as such, from this period that have survived. Amazing that they lasted this long.
I went to Hadrian's wall on a school trip once. Walked along the top of it too. In fact, I live the opposite side of the river from where the wall ends. There's also a Roman fort in my town. Look up Arbeia in South Shields sometime. 👍
Just checked when it was abandoned,138 AD. So the locals have had nearly 2000 years to remove stones for their own structures. Probably includes the many dry stone walls which enhance the landscape in the North.
138 AD was when the Emperor Antoninus Pius tried to build a wall further north. However, this was abandoned, and I think Hadrian's Wall came back into use, for several hundred years.. ( Under Septimus Severus?)
They did try to build the Antonine Wall further north but were forced back to the earlier wall and reinforced that. There are still bits of Hadrian's Wall in Newcastle upon Tyne that are visible but they are tiny in comparison.
You might be interested to know that not only did I instantly recognise where they were but many of the aerial shots were of a location I frequent go climbing -or at least did when I was at university. In fact I lived in Wallsend for a while as a student which is where it used to end on the East Coast and they have a small museum with a replica section. You correctly identified that they worked with the natural landscape where possible & if you’ve ever seen the Robin Hood with Kevin Costner in the bit near the beginning at a wall is filmed on the wall at quite a famous location along it where there’s a lone huge tree growing almost directly along side the wall between a small dip in the topography. Some bits don’t exist any more but as you can see some are very well preserved along with many Roman forts both there & throughout the UK. My childhood city Chester (or Diva to the Romans) was one of their biggest in the UK and to this day you can still walk around the city centre on top of the Roman walls which remain complete (and 20ft high)! It’s a little known but amazing small city with architecture spanning 2000 years throughout. The UK very much isn’t just London there’s an incredible variety natural beauty and ancient sites. Of course Stonehenge is best known but the country is covered is stone circles we don’t really know the purpose of and all manner of other interesting ancient sites. When driving from Chester to Newcastle (the city on the east coast at the end of the wall where I was at Uni med school) I would often not go the quickest way but drive up the Carlisle (close to the west coast start of the wall) and the cut across, often driving parallel but a few hundred yards south of the wall and at one point the road actually crosses it - just because it was such a pleasant drive.
guy de bedoyere is a British historian who was one of he experts on the long running archeology TV series Time Team. and he has made a very good informative video on Hadrian's Wall. Some factoids from memory. 1. The Romans didn't build as well as you might think, several sections fell down and needed to be rebuilt while the whole was under construction. 2. They seem to have changed their minds on the design a part of the way through. 3. When you look at the wall, it's big and contains a lot of dressed stone. So, not only did they have to build the wall they also needed to build quarries. SOme quarries have been found, and some found which were abandoned because the ancient volcanic rock proved to difficult. 4. Yards to the South there is The Vallum. A huge ditch, it's massive and it can still be seen today, it's very impressive. It's clearly defensive in nature doesn't seem to have been part of the original concept as it was built after the Wall. You'd imagine they discovered that the wall wasn't enough and they needed another fortification to the south. I imagine the Britons to the South were pretty mad at the Romans dividing them up from their cousins to the North. 6. Not one yard of the Wall forms the Boundary between England and Scotland and obviously the Scots and the English didn't inhabit Britain and that time. The people to the North were Britons as were the people to the South and neither were particularly friendly to the Romans. 7. When you visit the area you;'ll notice a lot of the farm buildings are constructed with suspiciously well cut qualities stone. If you were to visit the market town of Hexham you might also notice many of the stones to build Hexham Abbey (built from AD674) is also suspiciously similar. Yes, many years after the Romans left, locals used the wall as a convenient supply for building materials. 8. At it's eastern end Hadrian also built a castle and City on the North banks of the River Tyne with a bridge over the river. The City was called Pons Aelius (Aelius was one of the names of Hadrian), the City is today called Newcastle. 9. The actual Eastern Terminus of the wall is East of Newcastle at a town called Wallsend.
My ex husband and I got lost on the wall one misty winters day......its quite near where we were living...so we decided to have a long healthy walk... been many times before but the mist came down, the cold set in and it took us over an hour to find the car ..in hindsight it was hilarious...ee argued about the wayback to car,both fell over, then were convinced we could hear ghosts calling...i think twas just sheep...but we terrified ourselves, found the car then had to drive mega slowly to avoid going in ditches....arguing the whole time..🤣🤣🤣 Hilarious happy memories....alot of the wall is gone but its very atmospheric...but if u do go in winter take a torch...a powerful one...the mist comes down so quickly ..
I live in Northumberland near the wall. I don't think there's any school kid who hasn't had multiple trips to the walls and forts! I remember doing projects on it at school. When it was built there was no such thing as England and Scotland, there were communities but they were separate and not part of a larger group. The Romans changed that more by unifying the people further south but as you can imagine, the further away from the main power you are, the less likely you are to like it/accept it. It's pretty cool to see in real life and I've walked bit of it many times (the middle section which has the most remains). It's also a very popular photography location - especially an area called Sycamore Gap which no shock, has a large Sycamore tree there. That tree and gap were used in Robin Hood Price of Thieves so is also known as the "Robin Hood tree". The reason it's so small now is that locals would have taken stones to build structures. Also, a lot more has been damaged/worn by people walking on top of the wall.
73 miles in 6 years is an average of 1 mile of 20ft high x 8-10 ft wide wall built every 30 days. Which includes the carving and transportation of stones (sourced locally) etc. All with physical horse power & manpower.
Fun fact: In the Song of Ice and Fire book series (Game of Thrones show) Hadrian's Wall was inspiration for The Wall in the story, with the wildlings north of The Wall representing those in Scotland. A lot of history from Britain was meshed into the story, from seven Kingdoms, which the UK had at one point, trial by combat, shame ceremonies etc.
There were two walls Hadrians wall. The other was Anthony's wall. This was made of wood stretched from firth of forth. My grandparents lived in Bo'ness. part of anthonys wall went thru there.
I grew up in Northumberland (an English county that borders Scotland), and I can remember at least 2 school day trips to visit various parts of Hadrian's Wall.
In this case the "barbarians" were the Picts/Scots who the Romans could not defeat despite their vast numbers and engineering skills. We Scots are hard buggers, lol.
@@AlSnoopsReid Yes I've heard that before, I have family in Scotland and will pass it on. In the part of county Durham where I live the midges are vicious.
fun fact. The wall from game of thrones was designed based on this wall And Kings landing in based on roman London (when the wall around the city was maintained)
They tried repairing some of the concrete pointing in the wall, the Roman cement has been there for centuries, the modern repairs didn't even last 1 century. A lot of it is missing due to the locals taking the blocks for their buildings over the centuries after it was abandoned by the Romans.
A few years after it was finished the Romans abandoned it & built a new wall between Edinburgh & Glasgow (long before these cities existed). By the end of the 2nd century however they returned to Hadrian's Wall making that the 'frontier'. The Wall was manned by 16 forts built against it, with gates to the north, so troops could patrol into 'Scotland' , so the Wall acted as a back stop & launch base so they could control the land ahead, right up to central Scotland. They could also control movement in & out of the Province, charge tolls on goods etc. Each fort held garrisons of 500 or 1000 men, many of whom were cavalry, enabling rapid movement to supervise the territory around. There were similar forts both well north of Hadrian's Wall, & to the south, creating a massive military zone in the northern England & southern Scotland. There were similar defences all around the Roman Empire, across Germany, Africa, Syria etc but most were not as strong as in Britain, often being much lighter built, often in turf or wood, still these were major undertakings. Look out for videos on Vindolanda & Housesteads.
My grandad remembered his grandad going to the wall and taking stone for his barn, most of the farm houses around there are made from Roman buildings and the wall.they is literally tons of Roman stuff up north
I walked the wall some years ago. If you ever get to the UK you could try it. It's a beautiful part of the country. We stayed in B&Bs and a company picked up our luggage and moved it to our next stop over. We did it in 3 days but you could take longer.
I was born near Antonine's Wall which is about 110 miles north of Hadrian's Wall. It was not nearly as expensive as Hadrian's Wall, and was mainly a ditch and turf construction. However, this presented a formidable barrier, with the sharpened stakes that the Romans buried in the ground - quite as effective as barbed wire, as the historian said. There is a U-tube video on the Wall of Antoninus.
Remember going on school trips to the wall, freezing cold, howling a gale and raining every time 😂 It runs from Bowness on Solway in the west to Wallsend in the East.
This is where I'm from! 😀 A stretch of the wall passes along West Road in Newcastle, within a mile of where I grew up. I also used to work at Wallsend/Segedunum. Interesting fact: Arbeia Fort derives its name from Tigris bargemen brought in to manage river traffic on the Tyne. Guess I naively assumed the history of Hadrian's Wall was taught more widely.
There was also a wall further north, between Glasgow and Edinburgh. Hadrians wall wasnt the limit of Roman conquest in Britain. I used to travel along this route on a daily basis going to work.
Hi Tyler, one of the reasons given for the building of the Roman Wall, is possibly the disappearance of The IX (9th) Legion of crack Roman soldiers. Also Barbarians (Picts) are anyone who wasn't part of the Roman Empire. The Churches, Castles later took the stone for building many local churches and castles etc. Some parts are higher as it's much harder to climb the hills to reach it. I must also add that thieves operate in the many car parks, so hide any valuables when visiting.
The Wall eventually basically became a mine. locals used the stone that was 'dressed' i.e. 'shaped', for building materials over the centuries, hence the wall is much lower than it was originally. It actually features in the film 'Robin Hood, Prince of thiives' when Robin and his Moorish friend (Kevin Costner and Morgan Freeman) first land back in Britain. The section of wall was pretty low but it shows the thickness of the wall.
Hadrian’s wall is built on the great Whinsill outcrop of dolerite rock. Meaning that they didn’t have to build the wall as high. The Whinsill offered a natural barrier north facing where the non romanised barbarians lived. I live about 5 miles from the eastern end of the wall and have visited each and every fort along its length and other near by forts such as Arbeia (at South Shields) and Vindolanda (west of Hexham) the wall, it’s forts and mile castles is an amazing feat of engineering- well worth visiting
Archeologists found lots of wooden tablets preserved in the mud in one of the Roman forts. Many were lists. Some were dinner invitations, with the menus. One from from a mother to her son, stationed in the fort, to tell him she was sending him socks and underpants to keep him warm.
Yes, there are still parts of the wall left where I live and along the River Tyne in Newcastle (Wallsend) the Vindolanda Roman Fort on Hadrian's wall complex.
My father worked on a farm which was yards from the site of the wall. In that area the wall was built on the edge of a cliff/steep hill, making it difficult to attack.
I live a few mins from the Newcastle side of Hadrians wall (the north end) and in vindolanda it was found a letter written which destined for Rome but never got there giving a report of life there. At the end of it was an appeal to his commander to send more beer!
The wall is about an hour north of where I live and I've been to Vindolanda several times. You can see teams of archaeologists excavating and if you're lucky you'll see them unearth something. We saw them excavate a Roman coin and a shoe - Vindolanda has a surprising amount of Roman shoes on display, but imagine you need to look after thousands of soldiers' feet. It may not be so exciting for some, but I thought it was cool to be one of the first people to see it after nearly 2,000 years.
Hadrian's Wall was built to be used as a road so it was wide enough for their horse drawn chariots etc to race along as a supply route.. It was also discovered, to their cost, that where it started in Newcastle, in the east, didn't work, the Barbarians simply sailed up the River Tyne and attacked. Result was the Wall was extended downstream about 6 miles or so, to Wallsend , that solved the problem .
Just a point of fun. If you remember the film Robin Hood Prince of Thieves and the scene where Robin rescues the child Wolff from up the tree, while Azeem prays... that was filmed on Hadrian's wall. Kevin Costner actually walked along the wall!
Most of the stones belonging to Hadrian's Wall disappeared only in the last 1000 years as stone became an increasingly popular building material, replacing wood, and as more and more land was enclosed by the building of walls in stone. Had it not been for the actions of one philanthropic 19th century antiquarian and local landowner, John Clayton, town clerk of nearby Newcastle-upon-Tyne (who with Richard Grainger also developed the elegant Georgian/pre-Victorian streets in the city centre there now known as Grainger Town), there would probably have been nothing left of the Wall above ground level and it is through his efforts that the best preserved and most picturesque parts of Hadrian's Wall still exist to shoulder height. He stopped the local farmers from using the wall as a cheap and easy source of stone for the creation of stone walls along field boundaries, and the building of cottages, barns and farm houses.
I live 18 miles from Hadrian's Wall and believe me, no one will be taking stones from it they are far too heavy to lift. I walked a short way along the top of the wall when I was a child. There is a village in Northumberland called Corbridge that dates back to a Roman town it has an archeology site that is very interesting it's from the time of Hadrian.
there is also a Antonine Wall that is Roman thats in Scotland ,from river clyde to the forth, again in effect completly spliting south Scotland from the Highlands
I walked the central section of the wall, nearly 40 years ago. The section along the Steel Rigg escarpment has fantastic views north over the Northumberland countryside. Housesteads is probably the most spectacular fort on the wall. For a while, the Romans moved the frontier north along the line between the Clyde and the Forth in Scotland, and built another (turf) wall there, the Antonine Wall. But they had too many problems with the people between the two walls, and reverted to using Hadrian’s Wall as the frontier. There isn’t much left to see of the Antonine Wall when compared with Hadrian’s Wall.
The Romans left a lot of history behind in Great Britain, including many historical towns with Roman buildings, castles, and defences, such as Chester, Newcastle and Carlisle. Carlisle castle was attached to Hadrian's Wall, as were parts of Newcastle, and Chester to the south has an entire city entrenched in Roman fortifications. Remember, Britain is only 100 or so miles wide, so the wall was not that long in comparison to others such as the Great Wall of China.
It seems to have been a sort of customs barrier in effect,rather than pure defence.It was higher then of course,and ran from coast to coast with mile forts each mile(of course) at which you could pass in or out of the Roman Empire subject to inspection and tax no doubt
Yup - it's always said that the weakest part in any castle/wall is its gates - Hadrian's wall is riddled with them - every milecastle had one and then there were probably bigger gates near the large forts. So as you say, a customs barrier or at least something to deter the locals from 'lifting' the bigger stuff.
Scotland and England didn't exist as entities back then, the 'northern end' was was less easy to subdue than the placid southern parts of Britannia. Think of a northern society that had built Callanish and the Ness of Brodgar - spending a lot of time fighting Vikings et al, thousands of years before the Romans had arrived.
It cracked me up when you decided it was tourists that had robbed out the wall! It was more likely to have been locals who robbed the stone to build houses, churches, pubs, anything in fact, over the last 2,000 years. It is amazing that any of it is still standing actually.
I also lol at that. And the "robbing" of the ruin 's stones by locals has happened over time all over the world. If not for that, who knows how many more of the ancient world buildings there would be now?
But the locals had to survive any way they could. I certainly don't blame them in any way. I would probably do exactly the same. I mostly regret when destruction was done for some "grand ideals" instead of real necessity.
You are correct, the wall was an easy spurce of stone to build houses etc and one of our Abbeys was built using stone from the wall.
Parts of my house are, ahem, recycled Hadrians Wall... the wall is less than a mile from my house.
@@jeffrobinson9810 Yea Right, and what did the Romas ever do for us . well apart from the Local B&Q etc LoL
Most of the wall was knocked down to build a Road "the Roman Road" to move soldiers along the border to meet the scotchies when they decided to come a visiting.
The Romans called anyone who wasn't a Roman "barbarian". It's an all encompassing term.
I heard the Greeks called anyone who didn't speak greek a barbarian.
Remember that these ruins are almost two-thousand years old. As well as weathering and degradation over time, we've had centuries of people treating the wall as a kind of quarry. If they wanted to build something they could just remove the ready-cut stones
Yes I’d imagine there will be a few sheep paddocks made from it too
Quite a large part of lanercost priory and a number of farm houses are build from material taken from Hadrian's wall.
I live in Hexham which is 5 min drive from the wall. Our local Abbey has lots of stone taken from the wall. On Christmas eve I drove up to the wall and just watched the stars.. Its an amazing part of the country.
The Romans built another wall some years later further north, the Antonine Wall. It was turf on a stone foundation, but after the Romans withdrew it was mostly dismantled, and very little remains of it.
Yes! My son's nursery is next to a part of the Antonine Wall!
Yes, that's right.
The Antonine Wall was begun in 142 AD, only 20 years after Hadrian's Wall, and was completed in 154 AD. It was abandoned a mere 8 years later in 162 AD so did not turn out to be a very good investment!
The Romans then withdrew (largely) back to Hadrian's Wall where they remained until the Romans left Britain entirely by 410 AD.
The myths about Hadrians's Wall, followed by the Antonine Wall (I grew up next to it and still live beside it) being as far as the Roman Empire extended into Scotland have been recently disproved. Remains of a template design Roman fortress (complete with slave quarters) exist in Elgin in the far north of Scotland, so it is possible that they may have controlled the entire country? We will have to rely on newer technology like Leidar, to eventually reveal the hidden truth.
the locals built homes
@@paulmellon7598 There were Roman campaigns in the northern parts of Scotland by Agricola c 79 AD (possibly reaching up to Elgin) and Septimius Severus 208-210 AD in the direction of Aberdeen but they seem to have been shortlived, sporadic and not successful in the long term. The Romans would often build elaborate fortifications even for quite short stays. Archaeology is turning up all sorts of new findings so who knows?
A fun fact, they have found Roman artifacts along the wall. Among these was a note from a Roman soldier's mum telling him to wrap up warm and a list of what she sent him, including warm underwear. It would have been cold and miserable work in that region. That may not be exact, as I read it a long time ago but more or less. Mothers don't change, do they?
When considering Roman soldiers, it's worth remembering that the legions built a LOT of the empire's infrastructure, like the amazing Roman roads. When they were on the march (away from other resources), they had to be able to build a fortified camp every night!
Yeah, the Roman's made it quite far north into Scotland but never fully conquered Scotland. It was too inhospitable very far north and the tribes were very fierce fighters.
The bus that connects the most popular visitor centres is numbered AD 122. The metro station at Wallsend is the only one in England where the signage is in two languages (English and Latin).
Hadrian's wall runs through my home town of Newcastle. I remember parts of the wall being discovered during demolition work of old housing in the 60s. The houses had previously been built from old stones and using the wall as a foundation. I've walked sections of the wall many times and it's beautiful and bleak countryside. It must have been a hard life for them.
Newcastle never been there I'm from London, ain't that were get carter was made
@@da90sReAlvloc yup. Plenty of locations still exist from get carter up here as well.
Everyone knows this was the inspiration for the wall in game of thrones, right?
I used to walk to school past the Roman Temple in Benwell
lol i in wallsend
Used to play on the wall as a kid with it being at the bottom of my street in west Denton
Hi Tyler! It can be misleading to think in terms of "England" and "Scotland" in approaching this era of history. When the Romans occupied their province of Britannia in part of the "Pritanic" or Brythonic (British) Isles , the Scoti (pre-Scots) were still a tribe in the north of Hibernia, what we now call Ireland, and the Angles and Saxons (pre-English) were tribes in what are now southern Denmark and northern Germany. Great Britain and Ireland were divided into a patchwork of tribal territories/kingdoms which had no feelings of being parts of larger 'nations'.
These "overseas" tribes started to spread to different areas of Great Britain only after the Roman army had to abandon Britannia in the 5th century BCE, the Scots into south-western Caledonia/Pictland and the Angles, Saxons and others into eastern 'Sub-Roman Britain'. A little later the Scandinavian 'Vikings' (an activity rather than an ethnicity), some of them later called "the Danes", joined the party and things became _really_ complicated.
The Romans left Britain in the 5th century BC? They didn't invade until AD43, they finished their withdrawal about AD410.
All Britain was Wales at the time
@@iallso1 The Romans visited a few times between 100 and 1 BC but never stayed for long. Scouting or Raiding Parties? Pre Christian Roman artifacts have been found on Archaeological Dig sites in the South and South East and East Anglia.
@@tonys1636 - Sutton Hoo?
@@iallso1 Sorry, meant to type CE (= AD). Of course, the army left Britannia in 410 CE, but many of the inhabitants continued to think of themselves as 'Roman' for a few generations.
I live near Colchester, a Roman military fort 2000 years ago and, today, it is still a major garrison town. Any town or city with 'chester' in it started off as a Roman military fort.
We still use Roman roads too, Watlington Street is one, now called the A2. Roman roads tend to be long and straight.
Hadrians Wall is a World Heritage Site owned by the National Trust. People go on walking holidays along the route. It is not done to nick anything off the wall.
Chester or cesterie.Gloucester. Leicester,
I used to live in Northumberland, not far from the wall.
Some of the local churchyard walls (Victorian era Church) had stones which looked like they had been "recycled" from roman structures .
I think almost the entire village of Wall is appropriately named!!
That was amazing! I have heard about Hadrian's Wall, but this is the first time that I have ever seen it. It is amazing. Tying into your comment about ancient people's being smarter than we think, I agree. I think they may have, in some ways, been smarter. They had to engage with the world in ways that we no longer have to. I think that we have lost a lot of knowledge, and knowledge of all types. One of my grandmothers came from Greece. She came from a very small village in the Peloponnese. She could go out into the forested areas to the west of Chicago (Yes, there was once open land, farms and forests.) and she could walk around and find wild herbs, fruits, etc. She knew these things because where she came from it was a necessary skill. Here, it isn't necessary and we have lost that knowledge. That is just a little example of how quickly important knowledge and skill can be lost. I can only imagine what kinds of technologies, and technological knowledge we have gained, and lost, and gained again. I wish that we worked together around the globe to ensure that our knowledge was actually catalogued and kept. Maybe some day?
Hi .. Pagan Britain & other ancient peoples had a vast knowledge of Nature, its remedies & poisons. Those back then were very in tune with what Nature could give. When the catholic church took over Britain, it proceeded to burn witches & wizards. They did this because these 'heathens' didn't bow to the church. When in reality those people had their own customs & beliefs very much intertwined with Nature. A 'witch' or 'wizard' was very much someone that could help the population, rather than be someone bad or evil. They were like a 'witch doctor', someone that knew the various plants & other means for remedies to illness. These 'doctors' were renowned for living alone in the forest & living by Nature. The catholic church burned alive these people in complete ignorance to what knowledge they had & thought of them as 'satan' worshipers or somehow evil. If a person had pain, they went to the witch/wizard for help. Many times they would be given a piece of tree bark to chew & their pain would subside. It wasn't until Victorian times in England that we learned just how knowledgable those pagan 'doctors' were. The secret ingredient in that tree bark? Aspirin from the bark of the Willow tree! 🙂🏴🇬🇧
The Romans occupied Britain for 400 years. After the collapse of their empire the Saxons from Germany turned up then the Vikings and lastly the Normans in 1066 .
Historian's have suggested that the Vikings forged the identity of what was to become Great Britain .
Unfortunately when they left the people forgot or lost the skills like making/building concrete structures building in brick and underfloor heating along with piped water and sewage until rediscovered/reinvented centuries later. Wine grape growing on the South Downs and making it as well.
There is a beautiful Roman Villa outside Chichester the hyoercourse- underfloor heating is still intact and amazing, the mosaic floors spectacular, the toilets...not exactky private but drained 🤣🤣and yet within 100 years of the Romans leaving our shores we were back with no drainage and no heating for hundreds and hundreds of years. ...tragic really.
When you have a standing army, you have to find something to keep them busy. Like building a wall. The Roman Army had very good engineers. When marching across hostile country, they would dig ditches and build up defences at every night stop. Look up the recent excavations at the Vindolanda Roman fort at the wall.
There are a lot of aspects of Game of Thrones (Saga of Ice and Fire) which were lifted from British history for example the war of the Roses.
A lot of the Roman army were conscripted from normal people so when not at war they would have trades such as carpentry, masonry, ironmongary etc so its no suprise that they were skilled enough to build the wall. It also came in useful when the Roman army needed to build Siege Engines and bridges. As a strategy they build roads to move equipment and personnel quickly to the front lines, they were pretty much the first nation to build proper roads.
Yeah, most of Martin's inspiration comes from European history (castles, kings, medieval settings, etc)
Also the Red Wedding.
@@EdDueim that was from Edinburgh Castle history.
@@gabbymcclymont3563 Aye, the Black Dinner. And later at Stirling.
It has been established that some of the “Roman Troops “were actually conscripted from various locations in the Empire. Amongst them it is known that some of the soldiers based along the wall , came from the province called Dacia, which is now known as part of Romania and these soldiers were mainly cavalrymen for whom they found that the time they had to be based in the area of the wall was a very cold and miserable place to be, as detailed in some of the postcards sent by them to their families at home, requesting that their families should send them warm clothes and other home comforts, or imploring them to try to try to help them be deployed to other postings where it was a bit warmer. Another thing that was asked for was to be sent trade goods to barter for things that were not readily available to them.
Let's appreciate the fact that the stones have all been cut square, they didn't just build a big dry stone wall
This was one of the places I wanted to visit when I visited Britain and went there each of my first 2 visits. You should check out the history of one of the forts Vindolanda. What they've found there (and are still finding to this day) is incredible.
my sister went to the fort and had a picnic near bye .....she sat on a roman coin! so many are found it was worth around 6 - 8 quid.
Archaeologists continuously dig at sites along the wall - it's a huge area from which we've gained a lot of information about Roman Britain from finds, including letters & postcards (yep: post-cards. They were made of wood.) We've read stacks of them writing back to their mums asking for warm socks, or the wife of one of the fort commanders inviting another to her birthday party!
There seems to be a lot of confusion about dating our past in the USA, with any period before the 19th century being labelled "Medieval"? The two centuries from the 12thC to the 14thC are the only two centuries that one can comfortably call Medieval times... and there are probably people watching this who were taught in school that once the Romans pulled out Britain fell into the "Dark Ages" until around the 11/12 centuries.
Modern archaeology has proved that Post-Romano Britain (the period after the Romans left) was anything but "Dark". Now we have access to mind-bending technology that can penetrate deep into the earth and see what lies beneath us all over Britain. It's a pretty exciting time for historians & archaeologists here and other countries - so as we discover more & more about our past the first millennium becomes clearer & clearer and certain periods are starting to be labelled differently in different countries.
People who are unaware of the different time-periods (the Iron Age, Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, the Georgian, etc. etc.) are better off now simply giving the date something happened, rather than try to put it into a particular "age": because the more we discover, the more "ages" we refer to. I expect that, in another 30 or so years new time-period classifications will also spring up.
Archaeology is a comparatively new discipline so it's a really, really great time to be a historian though...as I said - in 30 years time perhaps all we think we know will have expanded greatly.
I think you might benefit from an historical time line. It would allow you to get some concept of the different eras.
Spot on Tyler. Buildings today are cheap & nasty in comparison to many historic buildings. I don’t believe we could re-create them, even if money was no object! Great vid! 👍💕
Houses then were built to last, houses today are built for profit
We probably could just there’s no profit in it.
@@hexoslaya3696 there's not much profit in building houses at all really
As I repaired a few houses along the wall I can tell you it was no fun trying to chisel holes in the walls to put central heating pipes in them. One house had seven feet thick walls and flag stones on the roof the size of pool tables.
Rome had a massive problem with building standards with the insula, the tenement building. Collapses were common as landlords built high and poorly. Laws on building standards were often ineffective. What folk see now are the remnants of well built temples and palaces but the vast majority of housing was of much poorer quality. It is easy to judge on what survived but in reality much was poorly built.
the locals had roughly 1900 years to 'borrow' stone slabs from the wall to use in their own buildings - no wonder it is not in the same state.
I grew up around Vindalanda one of the roman forts they are still pulling incredible finds from the site. A few years ago they found a skeleton of a child in one of the sleeping quarters.
Sono italiana e il Vallo Adriano non mi stupisce ,sono abituata alla grandiosità e alla bellezza delle costruzioni romane,erano costruttori e ingegneri formidabili (la manodopera era praticamente gratuita-sai,gli schiavi- e abbondante). Sai che il calcestruzzo romano è ancora il più resistente e non ne si conosce ancora l'esatta composizione? Grazie per il video,è sempre bello vedere le reazioni di chi scopre cose nuove per lui,è come guardarle con occhi diversi
I believe the composition of the Romans' concrete has recently been discovered - something to do with lime, I think.
I've lived in Northern Ireland all my life. Studied British and Irish History. Visited many places of historical interest, over the years and still I learn things from your video's.
Brilliant 👏 👏
A barbarian was anyone who wasn't Roman I think. The Roman army was amazing they weren't just troops they were trained in aspects of engineering and craftsmanship too so they could build as they traveled.
I dunno, apparently the picts painted themselves blue like a smurf and run around with no clothes on... I can understand why the Romans said, yeah, no...
The word barbarian goes back to an Ancient Greek word "barbaros" which originally meant someone whose language was unintelligible to you so they might as well be going "bah bah bah". It annoyed the Romans no end that the Greeks called them barbarians.
@@missharry5727 it's all Greek to me
@@missharry5727
Barbarian is derived from the Latin word "Barba" meaning Beard. Thus the Barbers Shop.
The Spanish named the Island of Barbados - Land of the bearded men.
@@orcencart7215 sorry, the Romans borrowed the word from the Greeks to whom it simply did mean anyone who wasn't Greek. Foreigners, in other words. The Greek word goes back to at least the 5th century BC. It is unrelated to the Latin barba, which is etymologically related to the German Bart/English beard and Spanish or Italian barba. This is just as much of a coincidence as the fact that the word chat has totally different meanings in French and English (and actually has at least three meanings in English that I know of : to carry on a casual conversation, one of several related small birds, and an undersized potato.)
Again something that Europeans would be taught when we where 12 or so.. Bit i have walked the remains of this wall in the late 70's so i have a hands on experience with Hadrians Wall. Ive seen many historic sites and even legends like Arthurs round table and so on. Walked up waterfalls as a 7 year old. Loved all that stuff. Oh and got married in Scotland as a kid as well, but that's another story.. 😎
I'm glad you made the point about Hadrian's Wall not being the border between England and Scotland. At the western end, the border is about three miles north of the wall, but on the eastern side it's about 70 miles to the north. It's a common mistake many British people make to talk about Hadrian's Wall being the border.
The wall is not 3 miles south of the border on the western side, it is 10. The wall goes through the Stanwix region of Carlisle (Roman name Luguvalium)and from there it is around 10 miles to the Scottish border at Gretna. I live 1 mile north of the border in Carlisle.
Hi Tyler, I believe the romans were the first people in the western world, to create a form of concrete to enable their more grand building projects.
6500BC - Unied Arab Emerates: The earliest recordings of concrete structures date back to 6500BC
3000 BC - Egypt and China: Egyptians used mud mixed with straw to bind dried bricks. They also used gypsum mortars and mortars of lime in the pyramids.
600 BC - Rome: The Romans weren’t the first to create concrete, but they were the first to use the material widespread. By 200 BC, the Romans successfully implemented the use of concrete in the majority of their construction.
The Pantheon in Rome has the oldest concrete dome and is still the world's largest unreinforced concrete dome
I was born 200 yards south of the wall in newcastle and lived 30 years 2 miles north of the wall , but now back in the safe south of the wall thou cross over it three or four times a week without a passport or fear of those scotchies after wor sheep.
I have family in Scotland so spent a lot of my childhood visiting. One time after learning about the Romans in school when I was maybe 9 I asked to go to Hadrian's Wall on my summer visit. I stood in a rocky field and my uncle said to take a step to the right. As I did he said, "You've just crossed Hadrian's Wall". While disappointing that it wasn't this huge structure I'd been taught in school the thrill of being able to cross those stones was like time travelling to me at the time.
Our forefathers (the barbarians) didn't feel sad. What gave you that idea? Different mindset I suppose. The Caledonians, the tribes north of the wall (or the Picts as they were later called), were a Celtic people, a warrior culture, a people who love bright colours (tartan), music and tales of heroism and battle. Hadrian's wall was viewed very much as a challenge, as a taunt, and it was treated in that manner. It was constantly under attack, in one place or another. The reason, simply because it was there, and young stirks could test themselves against the wall's defenders and have something to 'brag about' later, during the long dark winter nights. They did also mount more serious attacks, and overran the wall on occasions to steal cattle, etc.
They haven't changes today lol =-)
@@gutinstinct4067Said the Morris dancin rent boy.
Hadrian's Wall is used as an atmospheric film location at the start of the film "Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves" with Kevin Costner and Alan Rickman. The particular place on the Wall is a well-known one called "Sycamore Gap".
Just a brief stroll from Dover to Nottingham via Hadrian's Wall...
I come from Carlisle just south of Hadrian's wall towards the western end. The wall here is almost gone entirely but there is still a raised mound of earth where it once stood.
Towards the centre around haltwistle and Hexham are vindolanda and housteads old Roman forts. Visit Cumbria and Northumberland tourist boards for more info on the wall
Check out the artefacts found in the Roman fort of Vindolanda on Hadrians Wall.
The Roman wall as its called, runs from Bowness Solway in Scotland and ends in Wallsend {end of the wall on River Tyne} in North Tyneside . At Wallsend there is a Roman Fort and Museum Segedunum. Segedunum was built 122AD and abandoned in 400AD. Hadrians wall was my favourite school history trips.
Bowness is in Cumbria, England
All of Hadrian's Wall is in what is now called England. Scotland wasn't created untill centuries after the Wall was built.
Talking about "how did they build these so long ago", I'm always reminded of a bit out of Red Dwarf, where one character makes a similar remark about how they built such massive pyramids and the reply is "whips. Massive, massive whips"
Can't argue with your comment about the American education system. You are exploring and learning and asking questions so keep on, Tyler.
In some grammar schools they still teach Latin and it's very useful even today. I went to one in Chester, Cheshire.
Still taught in Scotland - paradoxically. Ita vero!
I grew up near Hadrian’s wall. Lots of dissapointed tourists visit expecting to see a 30 foot high wall and only getting to see the remaining foundations. 2000 years of locals nicking stones for building material. Honestly though it’s really worth a look and vindolanda has shown some incredible finds. Do visit but don’t expect a game of thrones wall.
You can walk around the fields and lanes of Northumberland close to the wall and often find cut and dressed stones in unusual shapes. Some have weird writing and markings on them and are built into field walls or simply lying in the corner of fields where farmers have moved them to stop them being a ploughing hazard. These are almost certainly from Hadrians wall.
A few years ago I went along the Wall, by car, over a few days, with friends. All along it are Roman sites one can visit, and museums.
Other commenters have commented on the ruins at Vindolanda, and the Vindolanda Museum. ( Strictly this is just south of the Wall. ) ( The original names in Roman times, like 'Vindolanda', of most of the fortresses along the Wall are known.)
The boggy ground has preserved many things which should have perished. At this Museum are a great pile of Roman shoes, and even the horsehair crests from their helmets. ( Shock, horror! Traces of wool sticking to the sandals show that the Romans wore socks with them...)
But the Vindolanda tablets - they're on a massive website online - are probably the greatest thing we've ever found in Britain. On bits of bark, and now only readable in the infra-red, is the everyday correspondence of the soldiers from the Roman Empire. ( If they couldn't write, they hired a scribe.) One soldier is sending underpants and socks to another. There is a daily rota. There are the supply lists, including for beer. There is the invitation from the wife of one commander to another's wife to her birthday party; mostly written by a scribe, she finishes it in her own handwriting, the first we have from a Roman woman. There is a letter from one dodgy supplier to another. There are rude comments about the natives.
I don't think we have the full story about why the Wall was built. I think there was a colossal rebellion just after Trajan died, which was hushed up. A Roman Legion mysteriously disappears. ( This led to Rosemary Sutcliffe's book "The Eagle of the Ninth", which has led to two films, the second with Channing Tatum.) Maybe the Wall was intended to separate discontented tribes, not allowing them to join up.
Popular walk these days - the length of the walk. Lots of folk do it with lovely pub visits on the way.
He'll probably shit himself when he finds out about Stonehenge
Been to Hadrian's Wall many times, it may be decrepit in places, but it's still really cool and the countryside it winds through is lovely in places.
I walked the length of the wall, Bowness-on-Solway to Wallsend, in Sept 21. Approx 90 miles over 6 days (by the time you've added small walks to hotels off the wall). For approx 25 miles at each end, there is not much to see, but the central section, that shown in the video you watched, is spectacular. The Romans made the most of the natural landscape and built atop a natural fault line that created miles of north facing cliff that added to the difficulty of breaching the wall. At both ends, where the land is flatter and more suitable for settlement and farming, the wall became a source of stone for houses, churches and such, and has long been dismantled, whereas the ditches have been ploughed until very little remains visible. Running parallel to the wall on the southern side, a military road was built to allow rapid transfer of troops should any attack be mounted.
The Romans considered anyone not under Roman rule or civilisation to be "Barbarians" but its been proven many places were very diverse with its own culture
@InsidiousBeatz
In the Graeco-Roman world simply meant peoples who weren't under Greek or Roman domination. Originally, it was used by the Ancient Greeks to mean peoples who didn't speak Greek.
@@charleswatson1093 so literally what i said. "Not under Roman rule" thanks for adding different words to the same answer 👍👌
@@FixTheLanes
My apologies! I was careless.
Hi Tyler. If you were ever a fan ig Game of Thrones, George Martin depicts Hadrians Wall perfectly by giving the northern people the tag of being 'wildlings' rather than barbarians. There was also the Antonine wall, build years before from turf and with deep ditches.
deep Vallums
I live just down the road from that and visit often. Not had a chance to watch the video yet, but will....if it doesn't go into detail about Vindolanda, check that out. This is a roman fort they excavated. There are letters, as such, from this period that have survived. Amazing that they lasted this long.
I went to Hadrian's wall on a school trip once. Walked along the top of it too. In fact, I live the opposite side of the river from where the wall ends. There's also a Roman fort in my town. Look up Arbeia in South Shields sometime. 👍
Just checked when it was abandoned,138 AD. So the locals have had nearly 2000 years to remove stones for their own structures. Probably includes the many dry stone walls which enhance the landscape in the North.
The same thing happened to Llantrisant castle in south Wales as soon as it fell into disuse. There's not much left of the castle now.
138 AD was when the Emperor Antoninus Pius tried to build a wall further north. However, this was abandoned, and I think Hadrian's Wall came back into use, for several hundred years.. ( Under Septimus Severus?)
It's a miracle anything is left of the wall, they just didn't have enough time to rob it all.
They did try to build the Antonine Wall further north but were forced back to the earlier wall and reinforced that. There are still bits of Hadrian's Wall in Newcastle upon Tyne that are visible but they are tiny in comparison.
You might be interested to know that not only did I instantly recognise where they were but many of the aerial shots were of a location I frequent go climbing -or at least did when I was at university. In fact I lived in Wallsend for a while as a student which is where it used to end on the East Coast and they have a small museum with a replica section.
You correctly identified that they worked with the natural landscape where possible & if you’ve ever seen the Robin Hood with Kevin Costner in the bit near the beginning at a wall is filmed on the wall at quite a famous location along it where there’s a lone huge tree growing almost directly along side the wall between a small dip in the topography.
Some bits don’t exist any more but as you can see some are very well preserved along with many Roman forts both there & throughout the UK. My childhood city Chester (or Diva to the Romans) was one of their biggest in the UK and to this day you can still walk around the city centre on top of the Roman walls which remain complete (and 20ft high)! It’s a little known but amazing small city with architecture spanning 2000 years throughout.
The UK very much isn’t just London there’s an incredible variety natural beauty and ancient sites. Of course Stonehenge is best known but the country is covered is stone circles we don’t really know the purpose of and all manner of other interesting ancient sites.
When driving from Chester to Newcastle (the city on the east coast at the end of the wall where I was at Uni med school) I would often not go the quickest way but drive up the Carlisle (close to the west coast start of the wall) and the cut across, often driving parallel but a few hundred yards south of the wall and at one point the road actually crosses it - just because it was such a pleasant drive.
guy de bedoyere is a British historian who was one of he experts on the long running archeology TV series Time Team. and he has made a very good informative video on Hadrian's Wall.
Some factoids from memory.
1. The Romans didn't build as well as you might think, several sections fell down and needed to be rebuilt while the whole was under construction.
2. They seem to have changed their minds on the design a part of the way through.
3. When you look at the wall, it's big and contains a lot of dressed stone. So, not only did they have to build the wall they also needed to build quarries. SOme quarries have been found, and some found which were abandoned because the ancient volcanic rock proved to difficult.
4. Yards to the South there is The Vallum. A huge ditch, it's massive and it can still be seen today, it's very impressive. It's clearly defensive in nature doesn't seem to have been part of the original concept as it was built after the Wall. You'd imagine they discovered that the wall wasn't enough and they needed another fortification to the south. I imagine the Britons to the South were pretty mad at the Romans dividing them up from their cousins to the North.
6. Not one yard of the Wall forms the Boundary between England and Scotland and obviously the Scots and the English didn't inhabit Britain and that time. The people to the North were Britons as were the people to the South and neither were particularly friendly to the Romans.
7. When you visit the area you;'ll notice a lot of the farm buildings are constructed with suspiciously well cut qualities stone. If you were to visit the market town of Hexham you might also notice many of the stones to build Hexham Abbey (built from AD674) is also suspiciously similar. Yes, many years after the Romans left, locals used the wall as a convenient supply for building materials.
8. At it's eastern end Hadrian also built a castle and City on the North banks of the River Tyne with a bridge over the river. The City was called Pons Aelius (Aelius was one of the names of Hadrian), the City is today called Newcastle.
9. The actual Eastern Terminus of the wall is East of Newcastle at a town called Wallsend.
I live close to a town called Wallsend as in walls- end . Love your videos keep learning about the UK !!!
Me too - Whitley Bay for me 👍🏻
The second video was the best of the two lol. 💯 Good video !
My ex husband and I got lost on the wall one misty winters day......its quite near where we were living...so we decided to have a long healthy walk... been many times before but the mist came down, the cold set in and it took us over an hour to find the car ..in hindsight it was hilarious...ee argued about the wayback to car,both fell over, then were convinced we could hear ghosts calling...i think twas just sheep...but we terrified ourselves, found the car then had to drive mega slowly to avoid going in ditches....arguing the whole time..🤣🤣🤣
Hilarious happy memories....alot of the wall is gone but its very atmospheric...but if u do go in winter take a torch...a powerful one...the mist comes down so quickly ..
I live in Northumberland near the wall. I don't think there's any school kid who hasn't had multiple trips to the walls and forts! I remember doing projects on it at school.
When it was built there was no such thing as England and Scotland, there were communities but they were separate and not part of a larger group. The Romans changed that more by unifying the people further south but as you can imagine, the further away from the main power you are, the less likely you are to like it/accept it.
It's pretty cool to see in real life and I've walked bit of it many times (the middle section which has the most remains). It's also a very popular photography location - especially an area called Sycamore Gap which no shock, has a large Sycamore tree there. That tree and gap were used in Robin Hood Price of Thieves so is also known as the "Robin Hood tree".
The reason it's so small now is that locals would have taken stones to build structures. Also, a lot more has been damaged/worn by people walking on top of the wall.
73 miles in 6 years is an average of 1 mile of 20ft high x 8-10 ft wide wall built every 30 days. Which includes the carving and transportation of stones (sourced locally) etc. All with physical horse power & manpower.
Fun fact:
In the Song of Ice and Fire book series (Game of Thrones show) Hadrian's Wall was inspiration for The Wall in the story, with the wildlings north of The Wall representing those in Scotland. A lot of history from Britain was meshed into the story, from seven Kingdoms, which the UK had at one point, trial by combat, shame ceremonies etc.
There were two walls Hadrians wall. The other was Anthony's wall. This was made of wood stretched from firth of forth. My grandparents lived in Bo'ness. part of anthonys wall went thru there.
I grew up in Northumberland (an English county that borders Scotland), and I can remember at least 2 school day trips to visit various parts of Hadrian's Wall.
In this case the "barbarians" were the Picts/Scots who the Romans could not defeat despite their vast numbers and engineering skills. We Scots are hard buggers, lol.
The Romans called them Caledonians too, as well as Picti, not Scots though, that came much later.
You must be hard to survive the midges. 😉
@@lesjames5191 Did you know that a beauty product called "Avon Skin so Soft" is the absolute best midge repellent you can buy?!
@@AlSnoopsReid Yes I've heard that before, I have family in Scotland and will pass it on. In the part of county Durham where I live the midges are vicious.
fun fact. The wall from game of thrones was designed based on this wall
And Kings landing in based on roman London (when the wall around the city was maintained)
Grew up playing on Hadrians wall and walked it a few times it’s always impressed me
They tried repairing some of the concrete pointing in the wall, the Roman cement has been there for centuries, the modern repairs didn't even last 1 century.
A lot of it is missing due to the locals taking the blocks for their buildings over the centuries after it was abandoned by the Romans.
A few years after it was finished the Romans abandoned it & built a new wall between Edinburgh & Glasgow (long before these cities existed).
By the end of the 2nd century however they returned to Hadrian's
Wall making that the 'frontier'.
The Wall was manned by 16 forts built against it, with gates to the north, so troops could patrol into 'Scotland' , so the Wall acted as a back stop & launch base so they could control the land ahead, right up to central Scotland. They could also control movement in & out of the Province, charge tolls on goods
etc. Each fort held garrisons of 500 or 1000 men, many of whom were cavalry, enabling rapid movement
to supervise the territory around.
There were similar forts both well north of Hadrian's Wall, & to the south, creating a massive military zone in the northern England & southern Scotland. There were similar defences all around the Roman Empire, across Germany,
Africa, Syria etc but most were not as strong as in Britain, often being much lighter built, often in turf or wood, still these were major
undertakings. Look out for
videos on Vindolanda & Housesteads.
I'm from Newcastle and we went on school trips to Hadrian's Wall. There are still remnants of the wall in Newcastle itself.
My grandad remembered his grandad going to the wall and taking stone for his barn, most of the farm houses around there are made from Roman buildings and the wall.they is literally tons of Roman stuff up north
I walked the wall some years ago. If you ever get to the UK you could try it. It's a beautiful part of the country. We stayed in B&Bs and a company picked up our luggage and moved it to our next stop over. We did it in 3 days but you could take longer.
I was born near Antonine's Wall which is about 110 miles north of Hadrian's Wall. It was not nearly as expensive as Hadrian's Wall, and was mainly a ditch and turf construction. However, this presented a formidable barrier, with the sharpened stakes that the Romans buried in the ground - quite as effective as barbed wire, as the historian said. There is a U-tube video on the Wall of Antoninus.
Remember going on school trips to the wall, freezing cold, howling a gale and raining every time 😂 It runs from Bowness on Solway in the west to Wallsend in the East.
Amd then a few thousand years later Lord Tyrion would decide to take a piss over this wall (or an allegory of it) just for fun.
I used to commute into Newcastle via West Road, there are sections of the wall that have been uncovered that run alongside the road
This is where I'm from! 😀
A stretch of the wall passes along West Road in Newcastle, within a mile of where I grew up. I also used to work at Wallsend/Segedunum.
Interesting fact: Arbeia Fort derives its name from Tigris bargemen brought in to manage river traffic on the Tyne.
Guess I naively assumed the history of Hadrian's Wall was taught more widely.
There was also a wall further north, between Glasgow and Edinburgh. Hadrians wall wasnt the limit of Roman conquest in Britain. I used to travel along this route on a daily basis going to work.
Hi Tyler, one of the reasons given for the building of the Roman Wall, is possibly the disappearance of The IX (9th) Legion of crack Roman soldiers. Also Barbarians (Picts) are anyone who wasn't part of the Roman Empire. The Churches, Castles later took the stone for building many local churches and castles etc.
Some parts are higher as it's much harder to climb the hills to reach it.
I must also add that thieves operate in the many car parks, so hide any valuables when visiting.
The Wall eventually basically became a mine. locals used the stone that was 'dressed' i.e. 'shaped', for building materials over the centuries, hence the wall is much lower than it was originally. It actually features in the film 'Robin Hood, Prince of thiives' when Robin and his Moorish friend (Kevin Costner and Morgan Freeman) first land back in Britain. The section of wall was pretty low but it shows the thickness of the wall.
Hadrian’s wall is built on the great Whinsill outcrop of dolerite rock. Meaning that they didn’t have to build the wall as high. The Whinsill offered a natural barrier north facing where the non romanised barbarians lived. I live about 5 miles from the eastern end of the wall and have visited each and every fort along its length and other near by forts such as Arbeia (at South Shields) and Vindolanda (west of Hexham) the wall, it’s forts and mile castles is an amazing feat of engineering- well worth visiting
Walked along the wall, been to the forts and learned a lot of history about it. I'm from the area.
The thing I loved about this was seeing lovely Clive Anderson again. Haven't seen him in years.
Archeologists found lots of wooden tablets preserved in the mud in one of the Roman forts. Many were lists. Some were dinner invitations, with the menus. One from from a mother to her son, stationed in the fort, to tell him she was sending him socks and underpants to keep him warm.
Yes, there are still parts of the wall left where I live and along the River Tyne in Newcastle (Wallsend) the Vindolanda Roman Fort on Hadrian's wall complex.
i find im the same when watching films, videos, reading.... i stop to google random things i dont know of.....
glad its not just me!
My father worked on a farm which was yards from the site of the wall.
In that area the wall was built on the edge of a cliff/steep hill, making it difficult to attack.
I live a few mins from the Newcastle side of Hadrians wall (the north end) and in vindolanda it was found a letter written which destined for Rome but never got there giving a report of life there. At the end of it was an appeal to his commander to send more beer!
The wall is about an hour north of where I live and I've been to Vindolanda several times. You can see teams of archaeologists excavating and if you're lucky you'll see them unearth something. We saw them excavate a Roman coin and a shoe - Vindolanda has a surprising amount of Roman shoes on display, but imagine you need to look after thousands of soldiers' feet. It may not be so exciting for some, but I thought it was cool to be one of the first people to see it after nearly 2,000 years.
Hadrian's Wall was built to be used as a road so it was wide enough for their horse drawn chariots etc to race along as a supply route.. It was also discovered, to their cost, that where it started in Newcastle, in the east, didn't work, the Barbarians simply sailed up the River Tyne and attacked. Result was the Wall was extended downstream about 6 miles or so, to Wallsend , that solved the problem .
Until l started watching these reaction videos l never realised that British history and it's structures were crazy, ridiculous and insane.
Just a point of fun. If you remember the film Robin Hood Prince of Thieves and the scene where Robin rescues the child Wolff from up the tree, while Azeem prays... that was filmed on Hadrian's wall. Kevin Costner actually walked along the wall!
Most of the stones belonging to Hadrian's Wall disappeared only in the last 1000 years as stone became an increasingly popular building material, replacing wood, and as more and more land was enclosed by the building of walls in stone.
Had it not been for the actions of one philanthropic 19th century antiquarian and local landowner, John Clayton, town clerk of nearby Newcastle-upon-Tyne (who with Richard Grainger also developed the elegant Georgian/pre-Victorian streets in the city centre there now known as Grainger Town), there would probably have been nothing left of the Wall above ground level and it is through his efforts that the best preserved and most picturesque parts of Hadrian's Wall still exist to shoulder height. He stopped the local farmers from using the wall as a cheap and easy source of stone for the creation of stone walls along field boundaries, and the building of cottages, barns and farm houses.
I live 18 miles from Hadrian's Wall and believe me, no one will be taking stones from it they are far too heavy to lift. I walked a short way along the top of the wall when I was a child. There is a village in Northumberland called Corbridge that dates back to a Roman town it has an archeology site that is very interesting it's from the time of Hadrian.
there is also a Antonine Wall that is Roman thats in Scotland ,from river clyde to the forth, again in effect completly spliting south Scotland from the Highlands
In a few months I am going to walk the wall with my brother. A 5 days walks among the country side. I am thrilled!
I walked the central section of the wall, nearly 40 years ago. The section along the Steel Rigg escarpment has fantastic views north over the Northumberland countryside. Housesteads is probably the most spectacular fort on the wall.
For a while, the Romans moved the frontier north along the line between the Clyde and the Forth in Scotland, and built another (turf) wall there, the Antonine Wall. But they had too many problems with the people between the two walls, and reverted to using Hadrian’s Wall as the frontier. There isn’t much left to see of the Antonine Wall when compared with Hadrian’s Wall.
I've actually been there It's incredible to see and my wife is Scottish she told me all about it when we were over there visiting her family
I was born, just a few miles above Hadrian‘s Wall but he needs to look at Stonehenge. That is a real piece of history
The Romans left a lot of history behind in Great Britain, including many historical towns with Roman buildings, castles, and defences, such as Chester, Newcastle and Carlisle. Carlisle castle was attached to Hadrian's Wall, as were parts of Newcastle, and Chester to the south has an entire city entrenched in Roman fortifications. Remember, Britain is only 100 or so miles wide, so the wall was not that long in comparison to others such as the Great Wall of China.
It seems to have been a sort of customs barrier in effect,rather than pure defence.It was higher then of course,and ran from coast to coast with mile forts each mile(of course) at which you could pass in or out of the Roman Empire subject to inspection and tax no doubt
Yup - it's always said that the weakest part in any castle/wall is its gates - Hadrian's wall is riddled with them - every milecastle had one and then there were probably bigger gates near the large forts.
So as you say, a customs barrier or at least something to deter the locals from 'lifting' the bigger stuff.
Scotland and England didn't exist as entities back then, the 'northern end' was was less easy to subdue than the placid southern parts of Britannia. Think of a northern society that had built Callanish and the Ness of Brodgar - spending a lot of time fighting Vikings et al, thousands of years before the Romans had arrived.
A British youtuber called Geowizard dribbled a soccer ball the length of Hadrian's wall for charity.