England -- Antiquities, Roman; Hadrian's Wall (England); Walls, Roman -- England
Here we are on the site of another Roman fort, occupying a commanding
situation. The church and churchyard now indicate its position. The
ground slopes down steeply on three sides, and the river Eden draws a
semi-circle round it, making thus an additional protection on the
east, south and west. No inscriptions have been found to tell us
what troops the Romans placed here, and no remains of the Wall or the
fort are to be seen. The interesting {196} stone-figure of a Roman
playing the bagpipes, which Hutton saw here used as a horseblock in
the street, and which is now in the Tullie House Museum, Carlisle,
was seen by a writer of 1794 "upon a door at Stanwix," and his
illustration shows the bagpipes much more clearly than the stone does
now.
Stanwix is now practically a suburb of Carlisle. Here I saw a funny
sight. A baby in petticoats, certainly not so much as two years old,
was sitting on his father's knee on a doorstep. An old country-woman
was passing, lame in one leg, and with a very irregular gait. The
baby looked at her, and began to call out: "Left ... left ... left
..." at regular intervals; and the old woman laughed heartily at
being thus drilled, pulled herself up, and walked (as I fancied)
rather less lame in consequence.
The Wall can be traced again near the Eden. I went down the road
towards the famous Eden Bridge, and through the iron gate on the
right, which is almost on the Vallum. This brought me into what
seems to be the playground of Carlisle, along the banks of the
river,--a playground so spacious that though half the city seemed to
have come out to play this lovely evening, there still seemed any
amount of room. The turf was very fresh and green and beautiful on
the undulating slopes which run down to the river. Two stone posts
on the bank above Hyssop Holme Well have {197} been placed to mark
the site of the Wall and its ditch in this region, but there is
nothing to show exactly where it crossed the Eden.
In order to trace its farther course as closely as possible, I
referred the next morning to the 6-inch Ordnance-map in the Tullie
House Museum. This shows how the Wall, after crossing the river,
passed to the north of the Castle Hill, while the Vallum curved round
to the south of it. Guided by the map, I followed the Wall as
closely as I could, picking up traces here and there.
Starting from in front of the Castle, I went down Annetwell Street
and Bridge Street, turning off by Bridge Lane on the right to
Willowholme, where there is a disused mill. Leaving the mill on the
right, I crossed a footpath, and then a footbridge over a stream, and
bore round to the left, following this diminutive tributary of the
Eden. The path soon crosses under the railway, and now we are again
on the site of the Wall!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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