Whalton and its Vicinity, by the Rev. J. E. Elliot. 831 



at any particular era in the latter, will in general be found 

 to have worked with equal, if not with greater intensity, in 

 the smaller area ; and its archaeological features may be re- 

 garded as the characters by means of which we are enabled to 

 read their operation and influence. As the principal details 

 connected with these are pretty fully given in Hodgson's 

 valuable work, I do not propose to trouble you with them 

 further than may be necessary, for the symmetrical arrange- 

 ment of my observations on such incidents and particulars as 

 have not come within the scope of the historian's narrative. 

 These I will dispose in their chronological order, noticing 

 such monuments of antiquity as require it, during the period 

 in which they are supposed to have originated. 



We might naturally expect to meet with some vestiges of 

 the old Roman occupation of the country; the earliest historic 

 record to which we can with any certainty refer. The parish is 

 situated within about 3 miles of one of their great thoroughfares 

 — the Devil's Causeway. The neighbourhood of the Wans- 

 beck, through which the line runs at the point where it is near- 

 est to Whalton, appears, from the numerous remains of British 

 camps and villages, to have been very thickly peopled. To keep 

 up the imperial authority amongst them, by making them ac- 

 cessible for troops as well as for commercial purposes, and to 

 furnish their inhabitants with the continental manufactures in 

 exchange for their own raw material, was doubtless one of the 

 objects of its formation ; and it would be necessary to guard 

 and keep open their communications with the more settled 

 country to the south of the Great Wall, by standing camps 

 and garrisons at commanding points in its vicinity. Such 

 appears to me to have been the intention of two camps situ- 

 ated on the ridge of the high ground, over which the road 

 runs from Whalton to Morpeth, and about 3 miles as the 

 crow flies from the Causeway, and about 1^ from the village, 

 at a farm house called the Camp-house. One of them im- 

 mediately behind the house had originally enclosed about two 

 acres of ground, which would have afforded space sufficient 

 for the accommodation of two legions. It commands an 

 extensive view of the country to the north and north-west. 

 Of this camp only the north and south sides of the rampart 

 and fosse remain. The other, which is much smaller, being 

 only about 80 paces in length by about 60 in breadth, lies 

 about 300 paces from it to the east and south-east on the 

 opposite slope of the ridge, and has an equally wide prospect 



