Roman Britain--and a Bit Later

Northumberland, June 26-27

Driving south from Dunfermline, we reentered England to spend two days with our good friends Roy and Ruth Humphrey in Wooler. When we mentioned our interest in Roman Britain, Roy took us to a fort on Hadrian’s Wall, perhaps the best preserved Roman fortification on the island, and to Vindolanda, an earlier fortification that Emperor Hadrian apparently visited to inspect the wall’s construction. Both sites were extraordinary. Perhaps half the wall, which was originally some 15 feet high, is still visible at the first location, and the second is an ongoing archeological dig, where researchers have unearthed a trove of artifacts preserved in anaerobic conditions, including textiles, footwear, and letters, most notably the oldest document indisputably written by a woman.


With Roy and Ruth Humphrey at Tillmouth Park Lodge


Fort on Hadrian's Wall

En route home from Brittania, we stopped at Cragside, an estate that was featuring an art display entitled “Inside Outside.” We were particularly taken by this four-poster bed floating in the pond.


Floating four-poster

Roy’s interests are many, but his most fascinating at present is the restoration of a “watch house” in the graveyard of a local church. This small structure, one of two still standing in Northumberland, was built to shelter a watchman hired by the relatives of recent decedents to ensure that the corpses were not removed by “resurrection men” skilled in exhuming bodies and selling them for dissection to medical schools in Edinburgh. There were holes in the house’s wall for the watchman’s shotgun, which the watchman was obliged to furnish although a parish committee paid for the powder and shot.


Doddington watch house