Chapter VII: Hunnum and St. Oswald's

Next morning I took leave of my kind hostess, and set out again, prepared to take things easily that day.

The Wall-ditch was very deep and clearly marked on my right, planted with trees (chiefly young larch), and carpeted with flowers--primroses, herb bennet, and the purple giant cranesbill. The Vallum also was conspicuous on the other side of the road.

In the garden of the next house, "Wall Houses," apple-blossom, purple and white lilac, and laburnum were all in full beauty, though they had been quite over in the south before I left. It was a sweet fresh morning, and a gentle breeze was sending down showers of apple-blossom over an old lady walking in the garden.

The next house is called "High Wall Houses," and is all that is left of a village of that name. Everywhere it is Wall--Wall--Wall in the place-names--all along the line.

A road on the left leads down to Corbridge, and then for the first time the road begins to be quite {62} overarched by trees, very beautiful and shady, and it continues so for some distance. Almost opposite the road to Matfen are traces of a mile-castle. A little way farther on is Matfen Piers, a small farm-house, with a long piece of the Wall-ditch surrounded by a strong stone wall in front of the house, and planted as an orchard with apple-trees and currant-bushes. It looked as if a stream ran along the bottom in wet weather. Now the apples were in blossom, and there were young lambs frisking amongst the currant-bushes. I went round to the back of the house to ask for a drink of water, but the place seemed deserted. Wild rabbits were playing on the back doorstep. And yet the scraper had been used quite recently. I was puzzled at first to think what it was that gave the house a sort of sophisticated air in front; and then I saw. Several of the inverted cups used on telegraph-posts were stuck up in the pear-tree which grows on the house, and it quite gave the impression of telephonic connection! But they were only traps set for unwary earwigs.

The newly discovered causeways across the ditch of the Vallum called for attention next. They are readily discernible in this region.

Soon after this, gorse began to appear on the mounds of the Vallum. The overhanging trees had ceased, and distant hills to the south of the Tyne had come into view, while the Wall-ditch was {63} again planted with young larch, and this time bright with marsh marigolds. The road runs through the village of Halton Shields, which now consists only of a chapel, a school, a farm-house and two cottages, though in Hutton's time there were twelve houses.

On Carr Hill the mounds and ditch of the Vallum are more striking than ever. A little farther on, a tree-covered mound, known as Down Hill, intervenes between the road and the Vallum, which has evidently made a bend to the south to avoid the hill.

Passing Halton Red House, with its beautiful beds of wallflowers, I began to look out for signs of Halton Chesters, where lies the Roman fort of HUNNUM. A white gate on the left of the road opens on to a lane through a field; the lane is bordered by gnarled and twisted trees, and leads to Halton Tower and the village. This is our indication of the site of the fort, through the midst of which Wade's Road runs, cutting it clean in halves. Having this clue, it is easy to recognize in the pasture to the south of the road the buried gateways and ramparts. The ground to the north was under grass for hay when I was there. When it was being dug up many years ago, the foundations of elaborate buildings were found, and the hypocausts for heating them.

The picturesque Halton Tower, which lies immediately {64} to the south of the fort, is the one remaining tower of the thirteenth-century castle, built of Roman stones from the Wall and the fort. The present owner is evidently a great lover of flowers. There are beautiful rock gardens (with a Roman altar among the rocks) and masses of rock cistus of every colour, especially a rich rose colour which was new to me.

Regaining the road and continuing westward, I soon crossed a lovely little ravine, with a stream flowing along the bottom, and beech-trees arching overhead. Its steep sides were decked with primroses and other flowers of spring.

A little farther on there is an interesting landmark; it is the site of the Portgate, the gateway through the Wall at the point where the famous Roman road running north crossed the line of the defensive barrier. This road used to be called "Watling Street," a name which was arbitrarily and mistakenly conferred on the entire length of Roman road from London to Scotland by archæologists of the eighteenth century. The mediæval and Saxon name was "Dere Street," and this name is correctly given to it for the first time in the 1921-22 edition of the Ordnance Survey.

William of Malmesbury, writing about 1140 A.D., refers to the Portgate, "where there stood a gate in the Wall, as may appeare by the word, that in both languages importeth as much."

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A small Inn, the Errington Arms, stands on Dere Street, close to the site of the Portgate. I called here to ask for a glass of milk. There was no one to be seen inside but a postman, who had evidently completed his delivery of letters for the day, and was reclining on the long low window-seat, in a Panama hat and carpet slippers, reading a newspaper, with a glass by his side. I knocked on the table, and a barmaid appeared, who brought my milk, but I found I had no change left, so I was diving into my haversack for a note to change. Meantime the postman had settled his account, and the barmaid had disappeared.

While I drank my milk, the postman talked very pleasantly about the state of the roads, and the weather, and the coal-strike; but when I knocked on the table to summon the barmaid again, he said quietly: "You needn't do that; I told her to take it out of mine, as you hadn't any change." This was my first experience of being "treated" in a public-house! But the way in which it was done only made me feel that it was another proof of the comradeship of the road. So I thanked him, and went on my way rejoicing.

Soon after this I heard and saw my first curlew, a sure sign that I was nearing the moorland; and these beautiful birds, with their sweet whistling note, were my constant companions from this point for many miles onward.

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And now I came to a point where both Wallditch and Vallum surpassed themselves in grandeur. Hutton writes with enthusiasm of the Vallum, and is quite poetic in his fervour:

"I climbed over a stone wall to examine the wonder; measured the whole in every direction; surveyed them with surprise, with delight, was fascinated, and unable to proceed; forgot I was upon a wild common, a stranger, and the evening approaching. I had the grandest works under my eye, of the greatest men of the age in which they lived, and of the most eminent nation then existing; all which had suffered but little during the long course of sixteen hundred years. Even hunger and fatigue were lost in the grandeur before me. If a man writes a book upon a turnpike road, he cannot be expected to move quick; but, lost in astonishment, I was not able to move at all."

The effect when I saw it was heightened (if such a thing were possible) by the marvellous clothing of gorse, glorious clusters of gold, as if Nature herself desired to do honour to this great achievement.

From the top of the next hill the Vallum can be seen to perfection, running up the slope of the hill facing us; nowhere is it better. Soon after this, the distant hills come into view, over the tops of which we are to follow the Wall.

Just before reaching the eighteenth milestone, another mile-castle can be very distinctly traced.

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Here again the sight of the gorse was something too much for words. The north bank of the Wallditch, which is very high just here, was one blazing mass of gold, facing south, and with the sun full upon it, while primroses and celandine starred the turf at the bottom. I got over the fence and walked along the glacis. The facing-stones were to be seen then on the northern face, several feet high. It may be the dry weather was specially good for the gorse. Certainly the hot sun brought out to perfection the sweet almond scent, and the bees appreciated it as much as I did, droning in and out of the blossoms in their hundreds.

It was simply baking on the road; the time was midday, and there were hardly any trees at all; only the long white road stretched out before me, going up and down, up and down, in straight, relentless lines.

Crossing the road to examine the Vallum near a small plantation of fir-trees, I caught sight of a column of smoke curling up from behind a low gorse bush. Yes, there was no doubt about it; the bush was on fire! It could not have been burning long, but the fire seemed to be spreading rapidly, running along the dry grass, which burned like tinder. I broke off some green elder-boughs from a bush in the ditch, and began to beat the fire, continuing till I had got it under enough to be able to stamp upon it; but it was half an hour {68} before I was satisfied that it was dead. It was by bringing water in my hands from a tiny stream that I finally finished it off.

Nearly at the nineteenth milestone there is another mile-castle. It is just where the hawthorn hedge on the left stops, and a fine row of beeches begins to shadow the road. How welcome their shade was! The view to the south from this spot was glorious. And gorse again! The Vallum was a "Field of the Cloth of Gold," seen against the blue background of the hills to the south of the Tyne.

A little farther on, at St. Oswald's Hill Head, a centurial stone is to be seen, built into the farm-house, on the extreme right, high up near the eaves. It is blacker than the other stones, and not easy to find without directions. The patient daughter of the house saw me, from the window, looking for it, and came out to point to the right one, a kind office she must often have to perform during the summer months.

On a little hill to the north of the road is St. Oswald's Church, supposed to be built on the very spot where Oswald, the Christian king of Bernicia, set up a wooden cross before meeting in battle the Welsh king, Caedwallon, in 635. Bede tells us the story. Holding the cross with both his hands while the earth was thrown in to set it fast, the King cried to his army: "Let us all kneel and {69} jointly beseech the true and living God Almighty, in His mercy to defend us from the haughty and fierce enemy, for He knows we have undertaken a just war for the safety of our nation."

This speech might be taken word for word from a modern newspaper's report of an appeal from the pulpit during the recent war.

Though Oswald had but a small army compared with that of his enemy, yet he won a complete victory.

Bede goes on to say:

"The place in the English tongue is called Heavenfield, or the Heavenly Field, which name it formerly received as a presage of what was afterwards to happen, denoting that there the heavenly trophy would be erected, the heavenly victory begun, and heavenly miracles wrought to this day.

"The same place is near the Wall with which the Romans formerly enclosed the islands from sea to sea, to restrain the fury of the barbarous nations, as has been said before."

The little church presents a very modern appearance now, and there is no necessity to ask for the key, for the whole interior is revealed at a glance--through one window.

As I climbed the hilly field in which it stands, a mother and three children were toiling on ahead of me, three chubby children, with bunches of bluebells, and campions, and buttercups flagging {70} in their hot little hands. They had walked some miles, I found, to lay these wild flowers on a grave behind the church--one of the many customs which we are apt to forget we derive from ancient Rome.

On the south side of the road, opposite St. Oswald's, is a field called Mould's Close, where tradition says that the hottest part of the battle was fought, and where, in witness, the plough has turned up skulls and sword-hilts.

Still farther south is Fallowfield Fell, where there is a series of Roman quarries, and a "written rock." Flavius Carantinus, a quarryman, left his mark there: "PETRA FLAVI CARANTINI." An old woman outside a cottage directed me where to find the rock, telling me it was near some "old wawkins." The Northumbrian country people so often elide the letter "r" and the final "g." One man puzzled me very much by talking about the "'Omans;" not till I had been listening to him for five minutes did I realize that he meant the Romans!

I found the old coal shaft, but I had some difficulty in finding the stone, and when found it was hardly decipherable. So many other people had wanted to claim the stone of Flavius, for no other reason than because he had claimed it, and had written their names beside his, when there were any number of unclaimed stones to be had! Well, that's the way {71} of the world, I suppose; the way of the spoilt child, who only waits to see his brother pick up a pebble, and then wails: "_I_ wanted that."

However, it was worth anything to have come; the outlook is so beautiful from Fallowfield Fell; and the beautiful name suits it. It is a wide heathery expanse, flecked by cloud-shadows, as I saw it, and sloping steeply down towards Hexham and the Abbey, which lie, tree-surrounded, at the foot of the Fell. And beyond the Tyne, hill upon hill recede into the distance as far as the eye can follow.

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