Magnifying Milecastle 46: First modern excavations of the Hadrian’s Wall site begin

This article is from Current Archaeology issue 402

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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.

The milecastle emerges

This year saw the opening of one large, square trench over the milecastle platform. Two-thirds of the structure’s footprint are thought to lie within its bounds, while the remainder is beneath a neighbouring field and outside the scope of the current investigation. Even by Day 3, things were already looking promising. As Rachel showed me around the trench, she pointed out the location of the milecastle’s north gate, through which soldiers would have ventured beyond the Wall, and outside the limits of imperial control. Its cut-through could clearly be seen, projecting in from the line of the Wall (which today lies beneath a modern field boundary), and hints of its southern counterpart, facing back towards the safety of the fort, were also beginning to emerge.

Linking these were the remains of a road surface that could be seen running along the edge of the trench, right through the middle of the milecastle. Its uppermost surface was made of large, fairly uneven cobbles, from which the team have recovered fragments of medieval green glazed pottery, but along its length patches of much neater, more typically Roman cobbling were visible underneath. Tantalisingly, LiDAR shows the route of this road continuing south beyond the excavated area, connecting the site to the nearby fort, and it is thought that this would have been the route linking Magna to the frontier, which was then reused and resurfaced in the medieval period. On the far side of the trench, the line of another possible road surface was emerging, which Rachel suggested could have provided a link to the Military Way (the Roman road running between the Wall and earthwork defences known as the Vallum, connecting all the turrets, milecastles, and forts along the frontier). Charcoal samples have been taken from these surfaces by the project’s geoarchaeologist Franki Gillis, and it is hoped that analysis of these will shed clearer light on their date.

Future plans