Halfway Home, With a Break: Hadrian’s Wall, Part Four

To the astonishment of absolutely no one, I planned for one of my extra tourism days to coincide at the spot where I first conceived this goofy plan: Housesteads and Vindolanda. They were amazing enough that when we visited Scotland with friends a decade or so after our first visit we made sure to bring them so they could see what I’d been waxing rhapsodic about for so many years. Housesteads probably hadn’t changed much – as far as I know it is no longer an active dig site, just a preservation/heritage one – but Vindolanda has multiple work parties ever year where passionate amateurs get to supplement the work of archaeologists to dig out more and more of the site. (These places always fascinate us when we visit; it’s impressive whenever we see evidence of people working on things that cannot possibly be finished in their lifetime.) Point being, on top of being interesting enough to absorb multiple visits in any situation, there’s every possibility of seeing something new each time you go.

So, go I did.

Given the distances I’m walking these days, technically I was within walking distance of Vindolanda from my lodging. That said, I was (perhaps overly-) protective of the mileage I was putting on my feet, so I arranged a ride from the same people that took me from the trail to the lodging the day before. 20 minutes later I was there. The overall vibe of this part of the country is “bucolic” and it’s no different as you approach the site. One thing that is a bit unusual about Vindolanda is that it is part of neither the National Trust nor English Heritage; it was found by a Reverend Anthony Headley in the 1830s, got serious work done in the 1930s, and then went into its own trust in 1970. Is this a problem? Not really; my biggest disappointment was that their refrigerator magnets weren’t formatted the same as ones I’d been buying at other Trust/Heritage sites. Alas.

As we have documented extensively, the entrance is unassuming. The treeline, whether on purpose or by design, blocks any interesting views of what’s to come. You pay your money in a teeny tiny ticket office, walk through one of those “through the years” photo montages and explanatory illustrations and then step through the facility and out into the site proper.

Gosh I love this place. There’s just something about the out-of-placeness of it all, and the sheer scope of it rivals anywhere we’ve been short of, like, Pompeii. The purpose of Vindolanda was reinforcement of Hadrian’s Wall as well as the usual, defensive hard-point in occupied territory kind thing. It was fortified for a couple hundred years, and they’ve found remnants of multiple versions of the fortifications as they’ve excavated. Serious changed were made to the layout of the place over time.

Two other historical tidbits combine to make Vindolanda particularly interesting. First, because it was a permanent location it may have been a military installation but it was also a town; plenty of civilian industry going on to support he fort and also just, you know, maintain life and sanity for the people living there. This means that all sorts of interesting stuff would have happened there, if only we could know what… Second, when Vindolanda was finally abandoned in approximately 370 AD, the order was given to gather up any documents and burn them… after which the officers promptly rode off, safe in the knowledge that their orders would be followed. Yeah, problem is that those Roman soldiers had been living in Northern England for who knows how long and wanted to get moving south. So, since how could it possibly make a difference, they dug a hole, buried everything that they were supposed to burn, said “opus perfectum est” (basically “job done”) and left. 1700 years later, thanks to the anaerobic nature of the peaty soil of the region, we have the greatest collection of Roman writings found anywhere outside of Italy, and damn few sites within Italy are any better. You can see the collection here.

It was a lovely day and a nice bit of refreshment to not have to think too much about keeping pace or reaching particular destinations. Tomorrow will be a ride back to Housesteads for a quick passport-stamping stop and then back on the trail.