Standing beside me on a rugged rise above Magna Roman fort, surrounded by the sounds of sheep and the gentle scrape of trowel on soil, Senior Archaeologist Rachel Frame pointed across the landscape towards a distant hill with a distinctive table-top profile. This was Burnswark, located about 30 miles away near Lockerbie in Dumfriesshire – a landmark as archaeologically important as it is visually striking, as it preserves evidence of a fierce Roman assault on an Iron Age stronghold (see CA 316). ‘For the Roman soldiers based at Magna, that was the home of the local troublemakers,’ Rachel said. ‘You could see them, and they could see you – it’s a strong reminder of why the fort was located where it was.’
Magna’s other key purpose was to guard the junction of two major Roman roads: the Stanegate (which runs east–west between Corbridge and Carlisle) and the Maiden Way (running north–south), both important routes for conveying supplies and information along the frontier. Like Vindolanda, the auxiliary fort lying c.6 miles to the east, Magna’s construction pre-dates that of Hadrian’s Wall, and its successive timber and stone phases would have been a dominating presence in the landscape even before they were augmented by the line of the Wall a short distance to the north. Once Hadrian’s Wall had been created, soldiers stationed at Magna could access the lands beyond it by marching out of the fort and through Milecastle 46. Generally small but heavily fortified, milecastles were evenly spaced along the Wall to control the passage of people and goods between the empire and its northern neighbours. The example at Magna would have been a vital part of this network – but today it has almost entirely vanished from view. From the post-Roman period onwards, the stonework of its walls and barracks has been systematically stripped away to be reused in other local constructions (for example, at nearby Thirlwall Castle), reducing it to a square, grassy platform in the corner of a field.
What survives below the surface? A new five-year project by the Vindolanda Trust (supported by a grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund) has been launched to find out. The investigations represent the first modern research excavations ever carried out on the milecastle or Magna itself, and, when I visited the dig in its first week this July, intriguing archaeological remains were already emerging from the Northumberland soil. What follows is an interim account of initial findings and the project’s future plans; watch this space for a fuller feature in the autumn, after the current investigation finishes.
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