Enjoying the Fall (and every minute of it)...

Decapitated milestone on Stanegate - on the way into Vindolanda

OK I admit it! my computer and Blogger have got me flummoxed. Everything seems to be working OK this morning including me.

I'm full of the joys of Autumn. It's beautiful outside. The sun is shining and the colours of the trees, bushes, leaves, fields, grasses are many hued, shiny, translucent.


What have I been up to? Well I've managed to load the photos of Vindolanda which I took a week ago. I've just got to see whether this format will now cope with my words. (I've worked it out. Please scroll past the photos down to the bottom.)

Parts of the water wells and Hadrian's Wall Reconstruction in the background

AD213 Military Bath house (later one) at Vindolanda. The original water proof, opus signinum (pink floor), can be seen in the foreground (half way up..it is horse shoe shaped)

Corner of Stone Fort II with Barcombe Hill in background

Stone Fort II with later bath house in background

"Y" shaped drain to catch the blood in the Butcher's Shop in the Vicus/Village

Roman Knife/Sword "grooves" at water well at West Gate

View of Vindolanda and brooding Barcombe Hill

The mysterious round house foundations beside fort walls and found in different places across the site

Would love to know what these markings are on the Via Principalis (in the fort)...will try to find out!

Marvellous masonry at HQ (Principia) Stone Fort II

View of CO's house (Praetorium - Stone Fort II) at Vindolanda

Looking back to West Gate via the fort drains!

Children and friends' children at Vindolanda

And again!

View of our wonderful tree outside my window

(Fellow guide, Patricia, and myself at the Mithraeum further down Hadrian's Wall last Saturday. A few of us were on an outing with the Friends of Segedunum (Wallsend). The Tour along the Wall, was led by the extremely knowledgeable Bill Griffiths, archaeologist, ex-curator of Segedunum. He is now North East Regional Museums Hub Manager of Tyne & Wear Museums. We followed the line of the Wall from Wallsend all the way out to Bowness on Solway. The whole Wall and frontier zone is still one huge jigsaw puzzle to understand but I saw bits of Wall I'd not seen before...including some in a carpark just before the junction of the A1 and A69 and at Heddon-on-the-Wall. The journey was a riot: full of good humour and lots of jokes. It really took me back to my roots. "A champion, canny day" was had by all.)

........Well...I've finished my side of the accounts/book keeping. Yeah! Will try to keep you posted on that score. The main thing is that we've had a storming season (despite not having finished the website) and we are still busy now...

And I've, more or less, finished my guiding for this season. We do a little bit more at October Half Term at Vindolanda and The Roman Army Museum which should be great. The Vindolanda Trust are getting ready to close the two museums at the end of October for complete refurbishment. The Vindolanda site (fort) will still be open until the end of January 2011. Both museums will open up again, ready for the next season, bright, shiny and spanking new.

So how did the guiding go?

I'm very pleased to say that, by the end of my first proper year of guiding, it went very well. Possibly very, very well! That sounds as if I'm not being very modest.* The truth is...that I was a bit wobbly at the beginning. Even I felt it. I was not even very happy with my introduction to the site. The way we'd been taught to start off...was at the water wells. In fact Vindolanda is a very complicated site (which I rather like as it is a challenge). I'm not over exaggerating..there is a lot of history there. No wonder the Vindolanda Trust say that there is another 150 years plus still to excavate. The Reverend Anthony Hedley started it all off in 1831 or thereabouts!

I'm also not criticising the way in which we were taught. Our teachers were/are two excellent Blue Badge Guides - Tom Keating and Jan Williams - they threw themselves into our training course and they worked so hard. They so desperately wanted us to do well. And we did.

I've stayed in contact with Jan and when I have my occasional wobble she's always been there for me - giving me some brilliant advice. Ultimately though, I've learned the old fashioned way, I have to make my tour my own.

I used to do the tour starting at the water wells and everyone seemed happy with the way I was doing it. But I wasn't. There were still some areas which I knew I had to brush up on. Again, I was busy during the Summer, with the children being off school, so did not really have a lot of time to do some reading...not the type of reading I wanted to do anyway.

When the school holidays came to an end we also started to see a different type of visitor at Vindolanda...the baby boomers. They certainly know their history. One tough, friendly group made me realise that I had to do some more reading and fast! (I don't mind. Anything, anybody...who keeps me on my toes...is good. We all get lackadaisical.)

I started to consult my own library of Roman books (which are starting to build up) and a super website/forum www.wedigvindolanda.com which has been created by a long standing volunteer excavator called Harry who is based in America. So effectively I started doing some digging of my own!

I came to the conclusion that I was happiest starting my tour off - over by the Stanegate - a road with a medieval name which was created by the Romans across this short isthmus from the Solway to the Tyne. Archaeologists are still debating when exactly it was created. I still need to do some more reading about it but I'm fairly sure that it had to be (t)here when the Romans decided to build their earliest camps and forts all along this region. It makes sense.

Despite it being a multi-layered site (there were, at least, six timber forts and three stone forts built at Vindolanda) I try to keep it simple for visitors whilst describing (succinctly) the span of the nigh on four hundred years of the Roman occupation. Along the lines of: How they started...what happened when Hadrian's Wall was being built...how they got going...what life was like at the peak of Roman rule...what life was like when The Roman Empire was on the wane...what happened when Roman life (perhaps) melted away....what happened when the Reivers took over.....then the crofters....then the antiquarians...then the Birleys...then The Vindolanda Trust...to the present day. All in 45 minutes to one hour.

And it is SO enjoyable. I LOVE showing people around. I adore talking to everyone...understanding why they are there and what they are interested in. Listening to their questions and attempting to answer them to the best of my abilities. If I can't answer them then I try to find the answer for them. The scenery is fabulous come sun, rain or shine. In fact I haven't done one tour where it has been raining (except for a tiny bit of drizzle perchance). My trusty yellow "Tour de France" umbrella has seen off those pesky droplets.

So, by complete accident, I feel that I have finally found my vocation - for me, myself, I, Hadriana: windswept, cloud and sun romanced, my ears trained for the call of a curlew...it's a far cry from those City days, in pinstripe suits, staying in five star hotels all over Europe...feeling isolated, bored, frazzled, in those elegant rooms with room service on tap.

[Fingers crossed that our guiding programme can continue into 2011. The funding for it comes to an end of December 2010. We have been well received. Let's hope that good reception can be sustained into next year!]

* On my last tour of the season one of our B&B guests, who is a writing a doctorate on the Thracians, who came on my tour, said it was one of the best he'd ever been on! (What does Alan Partridge say?...."Back of the net?!" I hadn't even paid him lots of denarii to say that either!)

Ooh. By the way. I'll be starting a new blog shortly (as well as this one) which will be a lot more general and covering lots of different subjects to show that I have other interests beyond the Romans!!! (I still plan to continue this one as well.)

As always, many thanks for reading! Valete!

Hadriana xx 

P.S. The Tullie House Museum is trying to save the rare Roman Helmet and Face-Mask, found in the Lake District, for this region. It is being auctioned by Christies today. Read about it here.

The Concrete Power of Roman Aqueducts

Quite a few people on my tours at Vindolanda ask me about Roman concrete. I've tried to find out about it as best I could. (Click on the "concrete link" for more information.) The video clip above describes the process briefly.

I got into discussion with one chap, a civil engineer, the other day, who has worked on a variety of civil engineering projects past and present. He is currently working on a project - something to do with the spire at Westminster Abbey. We had a chat about Roman methods of making concrete. I naturally talk about "opus signinum" which is a special waterproof concrete (broken up tiles mixed with lime mortar) which are still in evidence in the floors of the bathhouses. There is also the traditional Roman lime mortar concrete (the Romans were the first to invent concrete...which aided their imperial expansion plans massively). This film here shows that even their normal concrete, itself, is waterproof and goes on to show how the Romans built aqueducts and how they could bring in loads of water - 300 gallons per head per day in ancient Rome which is more than five or six times what modern day cities manage. So "what have the Romans ever done for us?" They gave us: concrete!

There are two bathhouses at Vindolanda. I show the visitors the more modern one (built c. AD213 for the Fourth Cohort of Gauls) and it is very near Stone Fort II...quite near part of an exposed aqueduct. So far so easy as to how they got the water to it. The big conundrum (maybe) is the older bath house at the far end of the site built for double the number of men (1000) c.AD100. It is not near a visible water source. It was demolished by the Romans themselves a bit later on. It had become outmoded and was too big for later garrisons. How did they get their water there? Well, having looked at this film where it talks about transporting water from 40/50 miles away, via aqueducts, into the heart of Rome.....then a few extra yards at Vindolanda isn't going to make a lot of difference quite frankly. Case closed. In fairness the archaeologists did find long alder pipes in 2003, fitted with oak pegs, where the water was still running through them almost two thousand years later. Maybe the water got to the bath house via a mixture of pipes and aqueducts. It definitely got there somehow as 100 men got to be clean all in one go!

A couple of years ago I read Robert Harris's superb novel, Pompeii, and its link is here. The whole premise of the book is built around the magnificent engineering of Roman aqueducts. The link, I've highlighted, is well worth the read as it is designed for book clubs. So now when I think of aqueducts I think of his book and the breath taking aqueduct at Segovia, Northern Spain. I can't remember whether I got my photo snapped there. I'll have to rootle around my old photo books. (Strawberry Jam Ann has just reminded me of a marvellous, world famous restaurant there where I was lucky enough to dine once - el meson de candido...The roast suckling pig is famed across Spain!)

I'm away from my computer over the next few weeks for a variety of reasons. I'll continue posting but may not be able to get back to you/your comments for a wee while. Happy Summer Hols everyone!

P.S.: Looks like an interesting programme on archaeology will be shown over the next month or so. It's called "Digging for Britain" and starts 9pm on Thursday 19th August on BBC2. It is shown at 10pm the same day on BBC HD for those of you with programme clashes! (Must admit that the silly but fab "Mistresses" is on at 9pm. !!)

A Head's up on Hadrian's "heads"

Bronze head of the Roman Emperor Hadrian (r.AD117-138), once part of a complete, larger-than-life-size. 2nd century AD. Found in the River Thames at London Bridge, in 1834

Last Saturday was the second last day of Hadrian's Head at the Wallsend/Segedunum exhibition. I'd been meaning to go and see "Hadrian's Head" for ages. I knew that I had to go and see it returned to London at the British Museum. It was a wonderfully sunny day so I decided to go for it with the two little ones in tow. Wallsend (Sting's home town) is relatively easy to find. From the West you turn right off "the Coast Road" (A1058) and then head for the Tyne. Likewise from the East you turn left...it is incredibly easy to get there. There's also a local "Metro" station...which is Tyneside's very own version of London's "Tube". Parking is free and right outside the Museum. The staff are very helpful and as it is a small museum it is simple to get around.

Following on from expatmum's recent lavatorial themed posts I think I should mention that Segedunum has the only example of a Roman loo found in Britain. There is also a reconstructed Roman Bath House which shows how the Romans were not too bothered about having any loo privacy i.e. they literally all mucked in together. I stupidly left my camera in the car and as it was so hot and the children were being pretty good I decided not to disturb the equilibrium. Jamie Shafer has put together some excellent photos of Segedunum which are all self explanatory. In Photo No. 6 of The Bath House there is also a picture of "Hadrian's Head" and whilst not immediately apparent...it bears an amazing similarity to that of Charles Clarke MP (see above). From my children's point of view the Roman exhibition was a bit too "high brow" for them. Not surprising as they are still very young. However for slightly older children (say 6 upwards) there are exhibits which will keep them amused: there are computer screens with archeology games; they can dress up as Romans and there is a small part about how the Romans approached medecine. There is a very small cafe there which offers sandwiches and cakes (I would advise you to bring your own supplies if your kiddie winks have special food desires/wants/needs). There were other exhibitions there which we didn't get to see such as the Egyptology one which would be a great hit with children. One point to think about is that this may be a museum to do first before seeing other bits of the Wall as there is not much left of the fort compared with say the Roman remains at Vindolanda, Chesters, Birdoswald and so forth. Nevertheless as children always like discussion of toiletry habits then a visit to Segedunum is worth it purely for the Bath House and the Latrines alone! (I've also vowed never to leave my camera behind again.)