Writing on the Wall

David J Breeze constructs a history of the different theories about Hadrian’s Wall – who constructed it, when and why?

- David J Breeze

The Romans were the first to write about Hadrian’s Wall; some 200 years or more after it was constructed an anonymous author wrote: ‘Hadrian was the first to build a wall, 80 miles long, to separate the Romans from the barbarians.’ Date, length and purpose in one short sentence. Unfortunately, other Roman writers ascribed the Wall to the Emperor Severus who reigned about a century after Hadrian and, as there were more statements by these authors, it came to be believed that the stone wall which we now correctly call Hadrian’s Wall had been built by Severus, and Hadrian erected something else. This confusion bedevilled Wall studies for around 1500 years.

Britain became detached from the Roman Empire about AD 410. The immediate cause is unclear, but it was certainly part of the slow collapse of the empire in Western Europe. Through the centuries that followed, learned men did not lose sight of the existence of this great wall in England, as the southern part of the island of Britain became. Bill Shannon, author of Murus ille famosus (Kendal, 2007) has drawn attention to the many references in Anglo-Saxon and medieval sources, including maps, in which it became known as the Picts’ Wall since it was believed that, after the Romans had left, it defended the Britons against the Picts to the north.