In 1848, revolution stalked the streets of European cities. As mobs demanding political freedoms took up arms and manned barricades, few observers could have guessed that the events playing out on the Continent would prove pivotal for Hadrian’s Wall studies. This unlikely outcome can be credited to one man – John Collingwood Bruce – surveying the European powder keg and deciding to look elsewhere for his summer holiday. Bruce had been planning to travel to Rome, but with that hope scuppered by the unrest, he decided to inspect an antiquity that lay rather closer to home: Hadrian’s Wall. The ensuing expedition included Bruce, his son Gainsford, and two brothers, one of whom was a school art-master tasked with composing watercolour keepsakes of the trip. Over the following autumn, Bruce gave a series of lectures in Newcastle, using the watercolours to illustrate his talks. Some members of his audience reacted with consternation to the claim that such impressive Roman ruins lay on their doorstep. So it was that the following year, 1849, Bruce led a tour or ‘pilgrimage’ along the Wall, allowing the 24 participants to judge for themselves. A new chapter in the story of Hadrian’s Wall had opened.
Bruce’s involvement with Hadrian’s Wall did not cease in 1849. The frontier had cast its spell over him and, by the end of Bruce’s life in 1892, he was the acknowledged doyen of Wall studies. In the intervening decades, he led a second sojourn along the Wall as ‘Chief Pilgrim’ in 1886, and did much to kindle public interest in the monument by writing a popular guide that became known as the Handbook to the Roman Wall. Remarkably, both of these innovations have stood the test of time. Modern visitors setting forth to explore the Wall will find that the Handbook is still an invaluable companion, albeit in its 14th edition, overhauled by David J. Breeze. Breeze is also, appropriately enough, the current Chief Pilgrim and has just published a history of these excursions (see ‘Further reading’ on p.40). Following that second pilgrimage in 1886, a tradition grew up of repeating the event every decade, breaking only for the First and Second World Wars. After the latter, the pilgrimage was rescheduled to 1949, allowing it to fall on the centenary of the first. The most recent Pilgrimage – the 14th – duly followed in 2019, when 211 Pilgrims participated in what the organisers believe is the oldest continuing archaeological tour in the world. As well as being charmingly convivial affairs, the pilgrimages offer an opportunity to take stock of where Wall studies are, and also look to the future. In that spirit, we will consider one longstanding line of enquiry here: what the Wall was initially intended to achieve.
Given the increasingly ingenious scrutiny that Hadrian’s Wall has received since Bruce’s day, it might seem doubtful that there is much left to say about the monument. The truth, though, is that there are still major gaps in our knowledge of almost every aspect of the Roman frontier. Ancient authors had little to say on the subject, with the only clear statement of its role occurring in a document that was probably compiled more than 200 years after the barrier was built. This document, known as the Historia Augusta, discloses simply that Hadrian ‘was the first to build a wall, 80 miles in length, to separate the barbarians from the Romans’. At first sight that seems clear enough, but history – and indeed the modern world – is replete with examples of barriers, borders, and frontiers that apply very different degrees of separation, ranging from a near-total block on movement to little more than regulating daily transit. Even so, the passage in the Historia Augusta seemed to fit neatly with an obstacle that appeared – from surface inspection of the ruins – to present few opportunities for passage across the frontier, other than at forts. By the 19th century, it was perfectly mainstream to view the Wall as a cordon sanitaire screening off the Roman province from savage northern aggressors.
