![]() The Vallum is known to have been constructed some time after the wall was completed, as it deviates to the south around several wall-forts which were either completed or under construction when the wall was nearing completion. In the late 20th century several excavations established that the marginal mound was also contemporary. This excavation demonstrated that the main north and south mounds were contemporary and built using material dug from the ditch. The first excavation was undertaken in 1893 at Great Hill ( Heddon-on-the-Wall, near Newcastle upon Tyne), where it was observed that the Vallum ditch was cut through a seam of fire-clay which was deployed in both mounds. It is now accepted that units of that Roman legion built the section of Hadrian's Wall which includes the milecastle, and they would have automatically included the names of the current emperor and governor on the tablet. The inscription on the tablet, probably made and erected to mark the completion of the milecastle, includes the names of Hadrian and Aulus Platorius Nepos (governor of Brittania during Hadrian's reign), as well as " Legio II Augusta" (Second Augustan Legion). Hodgson based his view on evidence which included a stone tablet in the Museum of Antiquities, Newcastle upon Tyne, which had been found in Milecastle 38 on the Wall in the previous century, its significance having been overlooked. ![]() After John Hodgson published the final portion of his History of Northumberland in 1840, it became generally accepted that the Wall and Vallum had been built during the reign of Hadrian. In the central sector the Wall runs along the top of the crags of the Whin Sill, while the Vallum, laid out in long straight stretches, lies in the valley below to the south, as much as 700 metres (2,300 ft) away.īefore the middle of the 19th century, the Vallum was most commonly known as Agricola's Ditch, since antiquarians thought that it had been constructed during the period when Agricola was governor of Brittania, the Roman province spanning what is now England, Wales and southern Scotland. In general there was a preference for the earthwork to run close to the rear of the Wall where topography allowed. The distance of the Vallum from the Wall varies. The total width of the fortification (consisting, from north to south, of mound, berm, ditch, marginal mound, berm, mound) was thus about 36 metres (100 ft). For a great deal of its length a third lower mound, the so-called marginal mound occupies the south berm (flat area between mound and ditch), right on the southern lip of the ditch. The Vallum comprises a ditch, nominally 6 metres (20 ft) wide and 3 metres (10 ft) deep, with a flat bottom, flanked by two mounds about 6 metres wide and 2 metres (7 ft) high, set back some 9 metres (30 ft) from the ditch edges.
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