152 Hadrians Wall. [Sess. 



As you walk along the beautiful clerestory and cast your eyes 

 to the roof, there you may see, forming part of the arch of the 

 roof, an altar on which can still be read the dedication : " To 

 Jupiter, Best and Greatest." The same is true of all the 

 churches in the line of the wall. The stones of the tower 

 arch of Corbridge Church are all Eoman stones from Corstor- 

 pitum. In the church at Chollerton, about two miles from 

 Cilurnum, is a Roman altar, long used as a baptismal font, 

 and some massive monoliths forming the pillars of the aisles 

 came from that station. 



It is the same with the mediaeval castles. The Caledonian 

 did not cease from troubling when the Roman eagles left 

 England, and the old stones of the wall, against which they 

 had so often flung themselves, were used to form the Border 

 castles. Thirlwall Castle is said to get its name from the fact 

 that here the Caledonians first thirled or threw down the 

 wall. The entire castle is of Roman masonry, quite evidently 

 taken from the wall, which came down here from the moor- 

 lands on its way west through Gilsland to Carlisle. The ditch 

 of the wall, forty feet wide and still ten feet deep, can be 

 seen from far away, scoring the steep hillside like the furrow 

 of a titanic plough. In humbler sort the wall still fills a 

 useful purpose in farm-steadings, field dykes, cottages, &c, 

 where the curious eye can at a glance recognise the stones, 

 and see here an altar, there a piece of an inscribed stone or 

 broken pillar or statue. 



I have but touched the fringe of a subject which, like all 

 truly great subjects, gets the more engrossing the deeper one 

 gets into it. We may now appropriately close our journey by 

 the side of a milestone standing firm, if slightly bent by the 

 weight of the 1800 years since the Romans placed it there. 

 It is one of the very few now standing in Britain, and its 

 inscription is quite illegible, but it marks the line of an old 

 Roman road, known as the ' Stanegate,' which can yet be 

 followed for many a mile. Borcovicus is over the hill from it. 

 One of the supporting stations of the wall, called Vindolana, 

 is just behind us, and the houses in this pleasant little valley 

 of Chesterholm are largely built from its stones. I hope that 

 some among my readers may tramp along this road some 

 summer afternoon, and, resting on the turf by the milestone, 



