140 Hadrians Wall. [Sess. 



Having looked through the museum and talked with the 

 old custodian, who has many stories of the excavations, we 

 are ready for an inspection of the station. A ' station ' was 

 a rectangular enclosure, varying in size from 2 to 5| acres. 

 It was seldom an exact square, and in which direction lay 

 the longer diameter depended upon the local conditions. 

 Eectangular in construction, the outer aspects of the corners 

 were rounded. In most of the stations the wall itself forms 

 the northern boundary, but the station of Cilurnum is an 

 exception, the wall coming up to the southern jamb of the 

 east and west gates. But even when the whole of the 

 station lay behind the line of the wall, the east, west, and 

 south walls were as massive as the Eoman "Wall itself, and all 

 aspects were surrounded by a deep ditch, and the gates, 

 which opened in the centre of each wall, were massive in 

 construction and heavily defended. The station was, in fact, 

 a fortified camp, capable of resisting attack from any point of 

 the compass. The interior was crowded with buildings. It 

 had to provide barrack accommodation for either an infantry 

 regiment, a cohort of 1000 men, or for a cavalry regiment of 

 500 men with their horses. Then there were buildings for 

 military administrative purposes, granaries, a forum or market- 

 place, and accommodation for all the various people whom 

 business brought to the neighbourhood. Let us now see 

 what remains of these things at the present day. As the 

 stations were all built upon a similar plan, I shall compose 

 my description indiscriminately from four stations, all of 

 which have been excavated. 



What does the approach to such a station look like ? 

 Cilurnum is in the park in front of a mansion-house, and 

 leaving the museum we open a field gate and advance by a 

 track towards a line of trees, and so approach the north 

 front of the station. Borcovicus is on the top of a hill. 

 We approach it from the east and observe the wall running 

 up to form the northern wall of the station, and here one 

 can appreciate the breadth of the wall. It stands about 

 6 feet high and 7 \ feet broad : at several parts one can walk 

 comfortably on the top of it. 



Undoubtedly the gateways are the most interesting features 

 of these stations. One would naturally expect the north 



