The milecastles and turrets of Hadrian’s Wall and their allocation to legionary construction teams

Abstract

In 1966, Mr. C.E. Stevens published the revised edition of his 1947 Horsley Lecture, "The Building of Hadrian's Wall". It was largely due to this stimulating paper that I became interested in the milecastles and turrets of Hadrian's Wall. By collecting the existing structural evidence, and adding to it where possible, I hoped to see whether the traditional criteria for allocating milecastles and turrets to the three legions attested on the wall would be confirmed. Before long, the idea of making Mr. Stevens' paper the basis for a new theory on the building of Hadrian's Wall developed. This theory, which is discussed in the last section of Chapter III and in Chapter V, is the joint work of Mr. D.J. Breeze of the Department of Archaeology in Durham and myself. It has been published in "Archaeologia Aeliana", vol. xlvi 1968 p.97-114, under the title, "The Building of Hadrian's Wall: A reconsideration”. I am indebted to Professor Birley, my supervisor, for his help and encouragement throughout the writing of this thesis; to Dr. J.C. Mann and Dr. Brian Dobson of Durham University and Mr. J.P. Gillam of Newcastle University, for discussing the problems raised by the evidence for the building of Hadrian’s Wall; to Mr. C.E. Stevens, for supplying information on the structural details of several milecastles in the central sector of the wall and to Mr. R.L. Bellhouse, who placed at my disposal his unpublished paper, "Roman sites on the Cumberland coast 1966 -67", with its valuable appendixes on the height and foundations of the coastal towers. Fig.II, "Hadrian's Wall from MC 4 to the Irthing: The Allocation of Structures and Curtain to the Three Legions", is the work of Mr. Breeze.