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On the evening of 27 September 2023 I was driving from Newcastle to Carlisle in order to take out a group of German students the next day. As usual, my journey took me along the Military Road – the cross-country route created in the aftermath of the 1745 Jacobite Uprising – but, faced with atrocious weather, I dropped down on to the valley road and missed my last sight of the Sycamore Gap tree. I woke the next morning to emails asking me if I had heard the news of its felling.
I have to admit that my first reaction was: what is all the fuss about? I had walked past the tree many times over the preceding 50 years without giving it much consideration, but gradually it dawned on me that many people – very many people! – had a great affection for it, and that we archaeologists could offer them some comfort. There had been other ‘iconic’ views of the Wall that were favoured long before the sycamore had been made famous by Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (see CA 405), and in that spirit I contacted my publisher, Archaeopress, and around 40 colleagues. Thus was born Hadrian’s Wall in Our Time, with 80 contributions spanning recollections of frontier excavations, a cherished place or object, events, and individuals. It was an undeniable success – Archaeopress’ best-selling book of 2024 – but it soon occurred to me that, despite the event that had inspired it, we had not included much about the trees along Hadrian’s Wall. Another appeal for contributions went out, and 75 responses came together to form Hadrian’s Wall and Its Trees (see ‘Further reading’ below).
Protecting trees
The story of how Romans related to, and made use of, trees, has many branches. I will explore some of these themes here, but such is the diversity of this field that I hope that the other contributors to the book will forgive me for not including everything. In literature of the time (Andrew Fox writes), their engagement was sometimes purely practical: Pliny the Elder ranked trees according to their commercial viability, while other authors, including Cato and Columella, left us discussions of various species in farming manuals, and from Martial we learn that box hedges were used, as today, to mark boundaries. Some trees bore religious symbolism, and some were venerated in their own right, such as the cherry tree supposedly grown from Romulus’ spear which survived on the Palatine Hill in Rome for over 700 years, into the reign of Caligula (c.AD 40).
The idea of sacred trees still holds cultural resonance today, and Sandra Walkshofer’s contribution embraces Tolkien’s Ents and even Christmas trees, while considering as well the contradiction faced by the Roman army during their campaigns. Oaks, for example, were especially honoured: sacred to Jupiter, their leaves were used for the wreaths worn by victorious generals, and their wood fuelled the eternal fires of the Vestal Virgins – but they were also felled to provide durable timbers for building forts and frontier barriers. Did such acts offend their divine patrons, and were the many altars dedicated to Jupiter that were erected along the borders of the Roman Empire (as well as smaller numbers devoted to wilderness gods like Silvanus and Cocidius) created to appease them?
Trees were protected for more pragmatic reasons, too. We have illuminating evidence of the actions taken by Hadrian to preserve the cedar trees of Lebanon. As Carole Raddato notes, these still-symbolically significant trees had been used for centuries of shipbuilding, both under the Phoenicians and the Romans, to the extent that their very existence became threatened. Hadrian’s efforts to counteract this decline can still be seen today, in the form of 200 inscriptions in the rocks around the forests of Lebanon – boundary markers reserving them for imperial use in an early form of environmental management. Might we see this as a counterbalance to the destruction wrought by his soldiers in building his wall in Britain?
Practical purposes
The Romans used wood in a variety of ways. Timber was a major component in their buildings but, perhaps more surprisingly, it was also used to construct roads, as in the Rhine delta, where the frontier road’s embankment was shored up with oak planks and piles. It was vital to many other aspects of infrastructure in the frontier zone, too: the sill of a gate in Carlisle’s 1st-century fort still bears ruts created by the wooden wheels of carts that trundled over it; water was brought to the bathhouse at Birdoswald along wooden pipes that are now represented only by the iron collars that connected them (CA 379); and, on the subject of transport, the Rhine delta has yielded the remains of many near-complete barges.
The amazing organic survivals at frontier sites like Vindolanda also testify to the many uses to which wood could be put. Most famously, these include the more-than 1,700 writing tablets that have been recovered from that remarkable auxiliary fort. Dating to the 1st and 2nd centuries, their handwritten ink inscriptions preserve a wealth of information, from logistical instructions to birthday invitations. Yet much larger pieces of wood from the fort are helping to illuminate frontier life as well. These include a pair of panels, each bearing a different number – III and XIV – which were found in a barrack block. They date to the 2nd century and presumably came from doors, helping us to understand how soldiers found their way round their forts: ‘Barrack I, Room III’.
Wood was also used to create much more personal items, many of which help to illuminate female experiences on the Roman frontier. Barbara Birley describes a delicate travel sewing kit – one of five examples found at Vindolanda, all made of boxwood and probably imported from the Continent. Containing 33 iron needles, the finely worked container (pictured opposite) was found still intact, wrapped in cloth. Wooden weaving tools were also inseparably associated with the female sphere, being both a feature of everyday activities and a symbol of feminine virtue that often appears on gravestones – such as that of Regina, a freed slave who was buried at South Shields in the later 2nd century, and whose monument is discussed by Amy Baker. Tatiana Ivleva’s contribution, meanwhile, examines Roman-period wooden jewellery – ‘not a common topic of discussion’, she notes, highlighting that wooden beads and hairpins are known, but they are often overlooked or mistaken for other objects such as needles or styli.
Wood was, of course, used for fuel too, and food preparation is not forgotten. Jacqui Huntley flies a kite in offering us the possibility of a ‘pizza oven’ at Vindolanda. Her evidence? The remains of an oven accompanied by a substantial deposit of heather charcoal – an excessive amount for kindling, instead suggesting a very hot, fast fire, suitable for quickly cooking foods like thin flatbreads.
Recovering from a chainsaw massacre
Many of the contributions in our books reflect years of intense research, and many are very personal: some describe trees in the writers’ own gardens, or sections of the Wall that they bought in order to protect the archaeological remains. We reach beyond archaeology to embrace poetry and music, including specially composed tunes for the Northumbrian smallpipes by Kim Bibby-Wilson (offering ‘a Piper’s Lament’: The Sycamore and Mind the Gap; music is provided), while illustrations form another integral aspect, from photographs, engravings, and paintings to the wonderful line drawings of Mark Richards which run through both publications.
Bringing the story full circle, the felling of the Sycamore Gap tree also features in Hadrian’s Wall and Its Trees with a report on the trial of the two men who were found guilty of the act, and an overview of dendrochronological work carried out on the tree by the Digital Humanities Lab at Exeter University. In case you were asking, it was 100-120 years old (CA 428), but the story of trees on Rome’s northern frontier stretches back across almost two millennia.
Acknowledgements:
The contributors to both books reflect the worldwide reaction to the felling of the tree; they come from Austria, Canada, Ireland, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Serbia, Sweden, the USA, and many parts of the UK.
Anna Walas, Future Leadership Fellow in the Institute of Classical Studies at SOAS, University of London, sums up well the feelings of all the contributors: ‘You have found an amazing way forward to taking a negative event, and turning it into an opportunity to deliver something very interesting and incredibly positive’.
The contributors are but one element in the creation of the two books, however. Both are designed by Ben Heaney of Archaeopress and reflect his flair and care in the creation of two attractive, as well as informative, publications.
Further reading:
• David J Breeze (ed.) Hadrian’s Wall and Its Trees (Archaeopress, £29.99, ISBN 978-1805830986). This book can be purchased from http://www.archaeopress.com. The following discount codes are available until March 2026: Worldwide: 20% discount standard: 098620 / UK only: 20% discount with free postage: 098620X
• David J Breeze (ed.) Hadrian’s Wall in Our Time (Archaeopress, £24.99, ISBN 978-1-803277349).
