I m Bruce Fummey and thanks to Perthshire Camper Hire, I ve been spending some time
on the Scotland England border. Today I want to ask some questions
that folk don t normally ask as I visit the most iconic tourist attraction,
borderline, immigration control, defensive structure
political soundbite and national monument that these British Isles have ever known.
Of course, you know that I m talking about Hadrian s Wall
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In the meantime, let me tell you a story
73 miles from the Solway Firth to the River Tyne.
1500 men and six years of building, guarded by men from Syria to Spain Rome to Romania
Mile forts with gates every well, every so often.
A vallum ditch to protect the wall from attacks from the south.
Aye ye didnae see that comin did ye. The rigidity of Rome meant that there
are even places where the mile forts were built where walking out of the gate
would mean a nasty surprise for a Legionary after a wee bit too much on a Saturday night.
You ve got to admire the Romans for their engineering achievements
but there was some bawbaggery along the way.
This may just be the biggest PR stunt in British history.
It IS the largest artefact left to us by the Romans.
It marked the edge of empire... which means there had to be an empire
and there had to be somebody to be kept on the outside of it.
As a Scot I can t count the number of times I ve heard one of our southern neighbours say
that they should rebuild this wall to keep us out.
Hadrian had the right idea . More recently I ve heard opponents of
the current Scottish government claiming: When Sturgeon rebuilds Hadrian s Wall
Then add whatever complaint you d have about any government that day.
I suppose when something s been there roughly since the time of Jesus, and it was built as much
for impact as it was for practical purposes, it enters into the cultural psyche.
These stones become a touchstone for attitudes and opinions.
This trans island monument was built to divide. As I stand on the wall, I look to the south
and I see England. I look to the North
and I see England as well. It turns out the whole rebuild
the wall to keep out the Scots Sturgeon rebuilding the wall was all bollocks
Hadrian built his wall entirely in England. He couldn t give a stuff about the ya boo politics
of two countries that wouldn t exist for another seven hundred years.
He had his hands full with his own barbarians .. You see, in our self-obsession, it s easy to
forget that this was only part of the jig saw. Hadrian also ordered 500 km of frontier to
be built between the Danube and Rhine. It s in kilometers because they re European.
After centuries of imperial expansion Hadrian was a consolidating emperor.
This was just the frontier he decided for the little bit they called Britannia.
Don t get me wrong there were a specific set of problems that motivated Hadrian to
come to this frontier himself in 122AD. Funnily enough it may be that he wanted
to keep Barbarians in as much as out. Matthew Symonds who wrote Hadrian s Wall:
Creating Division, gives a very good explanation of a guerrilla insurgency in Roman Britannia,
whereby attacks were made then the terrorists/freedom fighters would
disperse and escape probably to the north. So that the immediate problem a wall solved
wasn t so much an all-out attack from the north after all there had been a series of forts
and a roads across the country to deal with that for some time.
Rather the wall would mean that British freedom fighters were trapped from
escaping north and could be hunted down. The wall was to keep the English in..
That got me thinking what was the point of Hadrian s Wall?
What was its purpose when the Romans left? What s the point of it now
And should we get rid of what s left of it?
It seems that this wall was only partly about external defence.
It was also about internal suppression, immigration control, control of taxation,
manpower reduction and sending the message
that this is what Rome can do. When Rome fell some of the forts
associated with the wall continued to be used for living and protection of whoever remained.
Birdoswald fort is an example of that. Carlisle Castle was built on
previous Roman fortifications. and of course the wall was also used
by Robin Hood Prince of Thieves on his route back to Nottingham from the Middle Eastern crusades
He was better at firing arrows than reading a compass.
But for the most part the wall s post Roman puropse seemed to be as an above ground quarry,
providing building materials for later peoples. Even Hexham Cathedral has salvaged Roman
masonry in its construction One of the themes of this border
trip for me has been the realisation that there are always walls,
but from time to time they re just arranged differently.
The Romans left us to what s been called The Dark Ages.
It took till the Normans before we saw building on a grand scale again.
Not one great island crossing structure to keep out northern tribes,
but many a motte and baily castle to keep out Saxons they d subdued,
then to keep out each other as feuding nobility sought total power,
and stockpiled wealth behind those castle walls.
To the people who want to re-build Hadrian s wall to keep out Scots...
keep your money. I m blissfully happy in Perthshire
You don t need to build a wall for me to feel different to feel Scottish.
and I m happy for you to feel English and be proud of your heritage.
Anyway it s too late to rebuild this wall. As I say the nature of walls change over time
and walls are different these days. They re firewalls in cyberspace to keep out
spammers, hackers and princes of thieves. Our computers store our valuables now.
All those precious ones and zeros. The more zeros we can accumulate the safer, the
bigger, the more rugged the firewall we need with milecastles and vallums and forts
and ditches stopping Russians
invading through cable networks and radio signals that no Roman wall could withstand.
But we also use our computers to put up walls against those that don t think like us.
We use them to put up barriers to stop us thinking at all.
When the skin of your information bubble protects you from barbarian
hoards who disagree with you about What daily services should be public
rather than private or what pronouns to use or the benefit or conspiracy of vaccinations
or which colour of our fellow man/woman/person deserves help.
They re the walls we erect today in Rome s successor empire of the West.
Hadrian s Wall no longer serves its purpose. We should probably tear what s left of it down
after all the Romans had slaves didn t they? You see it s re-invented itself as a monument,
a leisure location, an exercise route a place to think.
and if we just give ourselves time to think. Maybe the walls will come down by themselves
If you d like another video on the Scottish English Border there s one
coming up on screen now. In themeantime