Day 5: Vindolanda
This was a deliberate rest day because I’d spotted Vindolanda on the map and knew that it was worth a visit. I think secretly I wanted to do the 7 mile circular walk that took in Housesteads, but yesterday’s walk left us a bit footsore, so we voted for Vindolanda and a quiet afternoon. We ended up spending nearly three hours on site and in the museum and enjoyed every moment, including a gentle walk there and back along the Roman Road (the Stangate).
The site is huge, and you start out thinking that it’s just about the acreage, but then you keep reading and you work out that there were at least five forts on the site, starting with the wooden fort of the Claudian invasion (which they are starting to explore, and at least two complete rebuilds. Including the vicus (the town outside the walls), which was occupied on and off for three hundred years, they reckon there is about a century of digging and research left on the site.
You can see in the photo above a deep excavation that has uncovered wooden remains: these are probably more than seven metres below the current ground level.
What’s remarkable about the site is that it has been in private hands since the excavation started, and the Vindolanda Trust continues the work of the original owner. It’s a live site: we were able to watch the volunteers and professionals digging and were even there while a coin was found (which was no big deal because they’ve found thousands of denarii) in the ditch from which they were removing all the infill from when the walls had been pushed over at the end of one period of occupation.
I could honestly write for hours about the site and the museum, and about the written records that they have been finding, including an amazing birthday invitation. I will certainly be doing some reading about it and there are even some new historical novels being published about the wall, but I’m tempted to find a copy of The Eagle of the Ninth and revisit the first time I even hear of the Wall. And maybe one day I’ll volunteer on a dig, just like some of the amazing amateurs we talked to today.
