Hadrian's Wall, Northumberland and Cumbria, UK
Hadrian's Wall, Northumberland and Cumbria, UK [Si].The most famous and most thoroughly explored frontier system created by the Roman army. The main wall runs coast to coast across northern England for 117km from the Wallsend in Newcastle on the east to Carlisle on the Solway Firth in the west, with a continuation of the line as a series of forts and signal stations along the Cumbria coast. Construction of the wall began in AD 122 on the instructions of the Emperor Hadrian while on a visit to the province; it was completed in about AD 133. Various kinds of construction are represented along its length, but the basic idea was a stone wall punctuated at intervals of a Roman mile by small forts (milecastles) with turrets in between. Larger forts lay at intervals. There was a ditch on the north side, and a military zone on the south defined by an earthwork called the vallum, which is actually a ditch. The purpose of the wall was to control the movement of...
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