I have been concerned with Hadrian’s Wall for over 40 years, and this past summer I completed my fifth Pilgrimage. I had the honour of being named Chief Pilgrim, which meant that I had to do much of the organising. As anyone who has organised a conference knows, the main reason for its success is careful planning, which, for the Pilgrimage, takes four to five years. We like to take it slowly, allowing time to shape and amend the programme. In fact, the planning starts almost 10 years ahead, as after each Pilgrimage we have a post-mortem and then shake the dust off that report as we start thinking about the next.
I write ‘we’, but who are ‘we’? The Pilgrimage is organised by the two archaeological societies of the north of England: the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne and the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society. Both societies are of considerable antiquity, the former being founded in 1813 and the latter in 1866. Each provides three respresentatives to a special organising committee for the Pilgrimage, with the Universities of Durham and Newcastle also furnishing one each.
The event that was subsequently recognised as the first Pilgrimage was held in 1849, when John Collingwood Bruce, a distinguished Newcastle lawyer, led a small group of ‘pilgrims’ to walk the length of Hadrian’s Wall. The Pilgrimage may thus fairly claim the title of being the oldest archaeological tour in Britain. It might be expected that such an event would have its traditions, and so it does. Since 1930, the Pilgrimage has alternated running east to west and west to east. In 2009, it was the turn to travel west to east. A new tradition was invented in 1999: the laying of a wreath at the memorial to Bruce in St Nicholas Cathedral, Newcastle, undertaken to mark the 150th anniversary of the first Pilgrimage, and repeated last year.
Collapse and decline