7.In the collection of Geo. Rippon, Esq., North Shields.

8.Historians differ as to the degree of credibility due to this author. Mr. Wright, in his Biographia Britannica Literaria, says that his is ‘a name of very doubtful authority.’ Sharon Turner thinks that ‘as far as he can be supported, and made intelligible, by others, he is an acceptable companion, but that he cannot be trusted alone;’ and Mr. Stevenson, in the preface to his edition of the original Latin of Gildas, writes ‘We are unable to speak with certainty as to his parentage, his country, or even his name, the period when he lived, or the works of which he was the author.’ Thus much, however, is certain, that he lived before the time of Bede, and is quoted by him.

9.This point is well put by Sir Francis Palgrave, in his History of the Anglo-Saxons. ‘The walls of the cities fortified by the Romans were yet strong and firm. The tactics of the legions were not forgotten. Bright armour was piled in the storehouses, and the serried line of spears might have been presented to the half-naked Scots and Picts, who could never have prevailed against their opponents.’

10.The supposition is not destitute of support. The migratory tendencies of the Gothic tribes have always been conspicuous. From the earliest periods of our history, the inhabitants of Jutland and its neighbouring provinces were in the habit of making descents upon the coasts of Britain. After the departure of the Romans, their attempts were probably more bold and frequent, but they did not then, for the first time, commence. The Norfolk and Suffolk coast was, from its position, peculiarly exposed to these incursions, and as early as the close of the third century, was placed under the command of a military Count called Comes litoris Saxonici. This district was called ‘the Saxon shore,’ as Sir Francis Palgrave observes, not merely because it was open to the incursion of the Saxons, but, most probably, because they had succeeded in fixing themselves in some portion of it. The weak hold which the Romans, at all times, had of Scotland, would render it an easier prey than England to the Franks and Saxons. Tacitus informs us, that the ruddy hair and lusty limbs of the Caledonians indicate a Germanic extraction. Richard of Cirencester tells us, that a little before the coming of Severus, the Picts landed in Scotland; from which we are at least entitled to infer, that the Picts were not the original inhabitants of North Britain; and probably the statement is substantially correct, inasmuch as large reinforcements landed in Scotland at this period, as previously observed. The Scots—the other branch of the people classed under the general term Caledonians—are confessedly of Irish origin. When St. Columba, whose mother tongue was Irish Gaelic, preached to the Picts, he used an interpreter. Fordun, the Father of Scottish History, tells us, ‘The manners of the Scots are various as to their languages; for they use two tongues, the Scottish and the Teutonic. The last is spoken by those on the sea-coasts and in the low countries, while the Scottish is the speech of the mountaineers and the remote islanders.’ The proper Scots, Camden describes as those commonly called Highlandmen; ‘for the rest,’ he adds, ‘more civilized, and inhabiting the eastern part, though comprehended under the name of Scots, are the farthest in the world from being Scots, but are of the same German origin with us English.’ Dr. Jamieson, whose researches in philology are well known, is decidedly of opinion that the Picts and Saxons had a common origin. Upon what other theory, he argues, can the prevalence of the Saxon tongue in the Lowlands of Scotland be accounted for? William the Conqueror could not change the language of South Britain—was it likely that a few Saxon fugitives at the Scottish court could supplant that of their benefactors?

The theory of the Germanic origin of the Picts removes another difficulty. How is the disappearance of the Celtic tongue from England to be accounted for? The Saxons, on seizing the soil, would not exterminate the inhabitants, but retain them as bondsmen. Had the majority of the occupants of England been the original Britons or Romanized Celts, we should have found in our daily speech, and in the names of our towns and villages, a large intermixture of Gaelic and Latin; but such is not the case. Grant that the Picts were a branch of the great Gothic family—and that successive waves of them had, long before the time of Cerdic, poured from the lowlands of Scotland over the plains of England, and the almost entire extermination of the ancient British is easily accounted for.

If the theory here advocated, cannot be sustained, it must at least be allowed, that the population of North Britain was largely leavened with individuals of the Saxon race. These strangers would doubtless obtain that supremacy over the natives which the Franks did in Gaul; so that, even upon this limited view of the question, the influence of the Germanic race in fixing the destinies of Britain, at this critical period, is apparent.

11.The whole of these are accurately figured and described in the "Materials for the History of Britain," published by the government. It is to be hoped that a work so auspiciously begun will not be strangled in its birth, by a false application of the principles of national economy.

12.Whitaker’s History of Manchester, i. 228.

13."Politically speaking, Rome is now the city of the dead."

14.Hodgson states the mean of nineteen measurements to be one hundred and twenty six yards.—Northumberland, II. iii. 310. This high number is obtained by its including the mountain districts, where the works are widely separated.

15.Harl. MSS. 374,—impr. Hodg. North’d. II. iii. 273.

16.Harl. MSS. 373,—impr. Richardson’s Reprints and Imprints, divis. Miscell.

17.It will be observed here that the erection of this structure has not been always ascribed to Severus.

18.Greater extremes are met with, but they are rare. Hodgson in a note p. 276 says, The foundations in the turnpike-road, just west of Portgate are scarcely seven feet broad; but opposite a plantation a little further west, ten feet and a half. Hutton found the Wall at Brunton only five feet and a half thick.

19.This is particularly the case about Old Wall in Cumberland.

20.Hutton’s Roman Wall, 139.

21.Hodg. North’d. II. iii. 276.

22.Horsley, in the profiles of the barrier which he gives, represents the marginal rampart or agger as being much larger than the south one. The present aspect of the works does not warrant such a delineation.

23.When travelling along the road west of Birdoswald, I have seen a ploughman and his team entirely disappear, on descending into the fosse of the Vallum.

24.An inspection of Horsley’s own sections will at once show this.—Britan. Romana, 158.

25.In corroboration of this statement, it may be mentioned that an intelligent and substantial farmer offered to take, on a twenty-one years’ lease, the Corchester field, in which the station of Corstopitum stood, at the yearly rate of 6l. per acre. It contains twelve acres.

26.The Notitia has Lergorum, but it will be afterwards shewn that this is probably an error for Lingonum.

27.The Notitia has Astorum in this and the subsequent instances, but all the inscriptions hitherto found have Asturum.

28.Brit. Rom. 102.

29.Ibid. 473.

30.This slab is in the possession of his Grace the Duke of Northumberland, and is preserved, along with several other interesting reliques of the Wall, in that noble baronial residence, so worthy of the chiefs of Percy, Alnwick Castle.

31.Now in the Dean and Chapter Library at Durham.

32.According both to Hyginus and Vegetius, the first cohort of a legion, in the times of the lower empire, was called milliaria, from its being stronger than any cohort of the legion, and from its generally consisting of about a thousand men.

33.A correspondent of the author writes 'Even in my own day it was the custom of the superstitious, on the line of the Wall, especially between Birdoswald and Cambeck Fort to pound the stones, bearing inscriptions, into sand for their kitchens, or bury them in the foundations of houses or walls, for the simple reason that they considered them unlucky—calling them 'witch stones’. When one was found, the old wives fearing that the butter might not form in the churn, took good care that it should never again make its appearance. Thus down went many a splendid Roman altar, a sacrifice to ignorance and superstition'!

34.The plough has now passed over the station of Watch Cross. The enquiries which I have made on the spot, and in the neighbourhood, are, on the whole, confirmatory of Hodgson’s view.

35.Mounsey’s Account of the occupation of Carlisle in 1745.

36.Ford’s Hand-book of Spain, 1st edition, p. 306.

37.On putting the inquiry pointedly to a person who had ploughed up some portions of the Vallum in the neighbourhood of Wallend, Cumberland, and who was also acquainted with the mode in which the Maiden-way (a Roman road) was formed, I was told that there were no traces of pavement in the Vallum.

38.We must not, however, pronounce a road to be impracticable, because now it would be thought so. A Northumberland farmer, speaking to me upon this subject, said he had seen roads which, in his neighbourhood, were regularly traversed only a century ago, on which no one would venture now-a-days; ‘it was like coming down a crag-side.’ He had driven through mosses in which the horses were commonly enveloped, but had no misgivings so long as he could see the heads of the animals.

39.Hodgson, however, distinctly proves, that the cornage, or castle-guard rent of the North of England—originally a payment in lieu of cattle, and called in English, horngeld and neatgeld, cattle-tax, or ox-lay—has nothing whatever to do with sounding the war-alarm by horns.

40.It must, however, be borne in mind, that even the uneducated labourer, in a highly civilized community, has unconsciously received a considerable amount of mental training, which places him in a situation much superior to that of the mere savage.

41.The remainder of this valuable communication is, in order to avoid repetition, embodied in the subsequent account of the Masonry of the Wall.

42.Hodgson II. ii. 298.

43.It would be described by a modern builder as a rough blocking course.

44.The cuts representing these markings are transferred from my note book, without reference to scale.

45.Concrete contains less lime, and is mixed with a smaller proportion of water than grout. It is chiefly used in large masses, to form an artificial foundation for a building.

46.The almost entire absence of those little white lumps of lime, not properly mixed with sand, which are found in the imperfectly prepared mortar of modern times, shews that the lime must in some way have been crushed by rollers or beaters.

47.Mr. Bell, of Irthington, tells me that in some places the foundation flags of the north side point upwards, at an angle of about twenty degrees, caused apparently by the settling of the ponderous mass. In this circumstance, we have an interesting confirmation of the supposition that the Wall was surmounted with a parapet on its north side. The foundation would have settled equally if both sides had been burdened alike.

48.Part II. v. iii. p. 294.

49.In some parts of the line, the joints of the Wall are at present filled with earthy matter instead of mortar, and it is the opinion of some authorities, and amongst them, the eminent architect and intelligent antiquary, Mr. Dobson, of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, that in these places, clay has been originally substituted for mortar. Very loath to suppose that the original builders of the Wall would leave any portion of it in so unsatisfactory a state, I have been in the habit of accounting for the apparent absence of mortar in the following way:—The upper part of the structure having been overthrown by a ruthless enemy, and the lower parts covered with the fallen rubbish, the whole heap would speedily become coated with vegetation. Roman mortar, with all its tenacity, would not be able to resist the powers of vitality; and the constant demands of the ferns and the foxgloves would, in the course of time, abstract the whole of the lime. The roots of the plants, by whose agency the work of abstraction had proceeded, yielding in due time to the process of decay, would themselves, in the form of vegetable earth, supply the place of the lime which they had withdrawn.

50.The only source of information which I have upon the subject of this wall, is a translation of an extract from a pamphlet by Professor Buchner, of Regensburg, in the first volume of the ‘ArchÆologia Æliana.’ The precise relation which the Pfahl bears to the stone Wall does not very clearly appear from this paper; to all appearance, however, the analogy between the German and English barriers is very close.

51.Hodg. North’d. II. iii. 276.

52.Ibid. 284.

53.Iter Boreale, 67.

54.He who has the heart of a pilgrim ‘per lineam Valli,’ will not fail to accompany the author, while he attempts, at the very commencement of his local peregrination, to pay a tribute of respect to three departed worthies who made the Wall their especial study.

John Horsley was the first and mightiest of the three—is it too much to say that he was the father of the science of ArchÆology? Born in an unknown locality of this county, receiving his elementary education at Newcastle, his academical at Edinburgh, he spent the greater portion of his life as the pastor of a Presbyterian congregation in Morpeth. His tastes, and great familiarity with the classics, induced him to devote his leisure hours to the study of the antiquities of Northumberland. Had he conceived that the Britannia Romana would have cost him one-third of the time which its execution required, the world would never have seen it. Having embarked in the undertaking, he felt it his duty to make it as good as he could. How severe his toils, how great his pecuniary sacrifices, how ardent his aspirations after emancipation from his self-imposed task, in order that he might entirely devote himself to his sacred calling, who shall tell? The thought that his flock might eventually be no losers, that his family and his own fair fame might gain by the enterprise, buoyed him up in his course. On 2 Jan. 1731-2, he put the finishing stroke to his labours, the dedication of his work bearing that date. Now he might hope to reap the fruits of his toils—the enjoyment of rest, such as the wearied only know, the congratulations of friends, the approbation of the learned, the replenishment of his exhausted means. None of these fruits he enjoyed. He can scarcely have had the satisfaction of casting his eyes upon a completed copy of his work. The ink of his dedication was hardly dry when he was summoned to the unseen world. Respecting him who recorded the mighty doings of the Romans in Britain, the parish clerk of Morpeth made the following entry in the church-yard calendar:—Buried,

‘Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.’ As regards the honours or enjoyments of this world, he died an utterly unrequited man. Even of that bubble, posthumous fame, an attempt was made to rob him. Warburton, in his Vallum Romanum, transfers Horsley ‘in bulk’ to his pages—he even copies, without alteration, the opinions which Horsley expresses in the first person. The honest Hutton often quotes the ‘judicious Warburton,’ little knowing whose the feathers are which he so justly admires. The precise spot where his remains rest is unknown. He whose lot it was to interpret, after the lapse of many centuries, the throbbings of natural affection over departed relatives in the heathen breast, had no one to erect over him, though a Christian minister, a memorial that should outlive a single century. Even the parish clerk, in his attachment to the altar and the throne, denies him, in the sepulchral register, the title which courtesy, at least, would have accorded him. Requiescat in pace!

The Rev. Anthony Hedley, was also a native of Northumberland; he was a man of literary tastes, and considerable antiquarian acquirements. He entered public life as curate of Hexham, where his preaching was that of a Boanerges. He subsequently held some temporary appointments at Whelpington, Newcastle, and Whitfield. Having, however, actively espoused the cause of that political body, who, until lord Grey became premier, had no patronage to bestow, it was his lot to sigh in vain for a summons to active occupation in the work which he loved. When the party whom he had long and conscientiously served, came into office, neglect was his portion. One of the original members of the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, he did much to promote the study of primÆval archÆology in the fruitful region traversed by the Wall. Biased by his taste for antiquities, he was led to select, as his abode for life’s evening, the beautiful valley of the Chineley Burn. The rural hall arose at his bidding, nearly every stone of which was chiseled by Roman hands. The milliary which told to Hadrian’s soldiers that another mile had been traversed, stood by his barn. The station of Vindolana was in his grounds—many beautiful altars and other important reliques had he dug out of it—he could tell where the prÆtorium stood, where the standards were deposited, where every soldier slept. Scarcely were all the arrangements for his comfortable residence at Chesterholm made, when death seized him as its victim. Imprudently superintending, whilst somewhat indisposed, the exhumation of an urn in the station, his mortal part was a few days afterwards deposited in the church-yard at Beltingham. He died in 1835, and his beautiful abode has since remained desolate.

Westmoreland has the honour of giving birth to the Rev. John Hodgson, but Northumberland enjoyed the advantage of his youthful and maturer labours. Successively curate of Sedgefield, Lanchester, and Heworth, and afterwards vicar of Kirkwhelpington, he was shortly before his death promoted to the living of Hartburn. He was the chief founder of the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and the chief contributor to its transactions. His tastes led him to contemplate, and an honourable desire to make provision for the education and settlement of his family, induced him to begin, a history of Northumberland. Seldom have laudable designs been so signally defeated. He lived but to complete a part of his task; his health failed, and his mind gave way under his excessive labours. His fortunes were not bettered by them; ‘I have lived,’ said he, 'to see that works of this kind are not suited to the times I live in, perhaps to any time. It is not profitable to me—it is not suited to my profession—I ought to do my duty in my profession—to take up night and day to do it well. Well? no; but as well as good intentions, holy zeal, every thought and faculty of my mind fully exerted, could do it.' Hodgson paid great attention to the Wall, and its antiquities. The last published portion of his history contains a vast mass of learned information upon the subject. It is perhaps enough for the present author to say, that had not Horsley and Hodgson cleared the way before him, he would never have adventured to write a book upon the Barrier of the Lower Isthmus. Though he cannot be a Horsley or a Hodgson, he hopes he will never prove a Warburton.

55.Brand conceives that Segedunum may be derived from the Saxon secg, a sedge or flag, and dun, which is an Anglo-Saxon, as well as a Celtic word; this would give, as its meaning—the hill of sedge. If we can suppose that any of the Germanic hordes had obtained so complete a settlement here, as to give them the power of forming a local vocabulary in accordance with their own language prior to the Roman occupation of this post, the Saxon origin of the term is by no means improbable. In no part of England was an early settlement more likely to take place than on the eastern coast of Northumberland, but, after all, we must probably assign a later date to the first arrival of our Gothic forefathers. If a Saxon derivation be at all admissible, another might be suggested: sige is the Anglo-Saxon for victory, and tun is town—the town of victory—an appropriate name for a station occupied either by Roman or Saxon forces.

56.This statement I make on the authority of the late Mr. Buddle, who said, as I remember, that in his youth he had seen the stones extending far into the river.

57.This place derived its earlier name from being the property, and perhaps the suburban residence of John Cosyn, a worthy alderman of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, in the seventeenth century. About 1740, sir Robert Carre, a London knight, and draper, but also, it is thought, a burgess of the northern metropolis, bought Cosyn’s house at Wallsend, and thenceforward designated it Carre-ville. The present mansion is, with some little impropriety, called Carville-hall.

When I began my inquiries at Wallsend, I had much difficulty in ascertaining which was Cousin’s-house. One man told me he had lived all his life in Wallsend—sixty years—and had never heard of it. Our books still continue to copy from Horsley, and to give us the out-of-date information that the Wall began at Cousin’s-house.

58.In districts where the Wall has been levelled with the earth, a foot-path or bridle-road frequently indicates its course. When land was of less value than it is now, the farmers, who appropriated the stones of the Wall to their own use, were not at the trouble to remove its foundation. The stony track, however, afforded a firm road, and when the increased value of the ground rendered it worth while to bring the whole into cultivation, a right of way had, in many instances, been established.

59.Hodgson, II. iii. 169.

60.Horsley’s traditionary account was probably derived from the same source as Leland’s; and therefore may indicate, not the station wall, but the great Wall itself. If, as the excavations made since Horsley’s day seem to prove, the Wall crossed obliquely from the south to the north side of Collingwood-street, it must have passed over the site of St. Nicholas’-church—not to the north of it.

61.So inviting a post would not escape the notice of the ancient British warrior—the appearances Mr. Hodgson describes, are not inconsistent with its having been an Ancient-British strong-hold.

62.Drawn to twice the usual size.

63.The author, as the leader of the pilgrim-band who traversed the Wall in the summer of 1849, used a staff made out of this primeval oak. It is now in the Newcastle collection of antiquities.

64.Tour, iii. 313, quoted by Brand, i. 37.

65.Brand’s Newcastle, i. 37.

66.Jerusalem was called after him Ælia Capitolina, and the games at Pincum, in MÆsia, Ælia Pincensia.

67.Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities.

68.In the possession of the Society of Antiquaries at Somerset-house. The wood-cuts are drawn to twice the usual scale.

69.Baxter, in his glossary, derives it from the ancient British words Pen ual, the head of the Wall. A comparatively modern village would hardly take a Celtic name; besides, although the Roman station has a commanding prospect in a military point of view, it is scarcely so elevated as to be entitled to the epithet of Pen or Ben; the village of Benwell is below it.

70.History of Manchester, i. 224.

71.The cottage is still standing in the neighbourhood of Wylam, in which George Stephenson first saw the light. Aided, in due time, by his son, worthy of such a father, he did more than any other man to elaborate our present railway system. The antiquary who has been revelling in the associations of the past will scarcely fail, as he looks down from his Wall-traversed heights upon the vale which gave birth to such a man, to give for a moment the reins to his imagination, and suffering his mind to penetrate the mists of futurity, ruminate upon the changes which the efforts of the Stephensons are destined to produce, not only in the physical, but in the moral aspect of society.

72.Derived from wall and botle, the Saxon for an abode.

73.Anciently written Throcklow. Low, or Law, is applied either to a low, round-topped eminence, or an artificial mound.

74.Hodgson, II. iii. 178.

75.Britannia Romana, 139.

76.Note in Lappenberg’s Anglo-Saxon Kings, i. 91.

77.The road leaves the Wall here, and keeps to the right of the hill. The north side of the hill is planted with trees, and it is interesting to notice in the summit of the plantation, a dip, corresponding to the depression of the fosse of the Wall.

78.Unable to resist the positive testimony of an intelligent eye-witness, I was, at first, disposed to think that he had included in his measurement some chamber on the inside of the station wall. I am now prepared to receive the statement without deduction. Some recent excavations at Risingham have laid bare a part of the curtain wall which has been built double, the intervening space, or chamber, being filled up with rubble and rubbish run together with lime, so as to form a solid mass of masonry of considerable thickness. The object of this arrangement may have been, to form a solid, elevated platform, for the use of the soldiery.

79.Both Horsley and Lingard had previously noticed it. Horsley says he was told by a countryman that ‘it was what the speaking trumpet was laid in.’

80.The aqueduct was not traced on the Halton side of the valley, so that the precise point where it joined the station is not known; it is now entirely removed.

81.Several of the sculptures at Matfen were sent to Alnwick Castle. Wallis uses the term, ‘centurial stone,’ very loosely, applying it even to the large Milking-gap slab.

82.Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, b. III. ch. ii. Giles’s translation.

83.Although a walk of a few minutes will bring the traveller, who knows exactly whither to bend his steps, to this curious relic, a stranger may fruitlessly spend much time in examining the many low scars which diversify the surface of the fell. It is a deeply interesting object.

84.The cramps seem to have been of various kinds. Some authors speak of iron cramps. One antiquary, I know, spent a livelong summer’s day knee-deep in the water, extracting one which proved to be entirely of lead. A. cramp, of very curious form and structure, taken from this bridge, is preserved in the museum at Chesters, and is figured Plate VII. fig. 1.; it seems to have been triply dove-tailed; the substance of it is iron, but it has been coated all over to the thickness of one-eighth of an inch with lead. The iron would give the instrument tenacity, and the lead protect the more corrosive metal from oxidization; truly the Romans built for perpetuity.

85.History of Northumberland, II. iii. 180.

86.The initial L, page 103, is formed of two of these Roman balusters. The lower one is at Chesters, the upright one at Chesterholm.

87.The section of the hypocaust wall on Plate III is taken from this example, and shews the hanging floor.

88.See an interesting ‘Account of an Excavation recently made within the Roman Station at Cilurnum, by John Clayton, esq.’ in the ArchÆologia Æliana, iii. 142.

89.The improved method of making draining-tiles for agricultural uses has suggested the formation of hollow bricks for building purposes. A floor might be paved and side-walls formed of these, so as readily to admit of the circulation of air throughout the whole substance of the apartment, and a handful of coke or charcoal, placed at the entrance of the flue, would effectually warm the whole. Specimens of bricks of this kind, remarkably strong, and ingeniously contrived for securely locking into one another, are before me, for which I am indebted to Robert Rawlinson, esq., after whose design they were formed. The Latin comedy represents the miser begrudging the smoke that escaped from his chimney—well may the benevolent man regret that whilst his poor neighbours are bending under the chills of winter, three-fourths of the heat generated in his parlour-grate is absolutely wasted.

90.Now at Alnwick-castle.

91.The words printed in italics have been supplied from contemporaneous inscriptions; they can scarcely be said to be conjectural readings.

92.Soldiers who by their good conduct had earned a double allowance of corn or pay.

93.Hodgson learnedly explains this inscription—Arch. Æl. i. 128.