The transcript of the third programme in the Romans in Britain series examined Hadrian's Wall.

(Standing by Hadrian's Wall)

GUY DE LA BÉDOYÈRE
It's just after dawn in the middle of summer, and I'm freezing, but there's no more exhilarating way to experience this extraordinary ancient monument Hadrian's Wall, riding across the crags over there. It's an amazing monument because it's this extraordinary testimony to a civilisation that had such an exceptional sense of purpose and belief in itself, that it was able to do almost whatever it wanted, regardless of the landscape and regardless of the conditions.

JIM CROW
Archaeologist
You get this feeling of that beyond is a desolation, and certainly in Roman terms we're on the margins. This is the end of the empire.

LINDSAY ALLASON-JONES
Roman Historian
There are very few real Italians on Hadrian's Wall. They're mostly coming from the Low Countries as we would call them today, but we've got Africans, we've got Syrians, they're coming from all over the Roman world.

SOLDIER
Roman Re-enactor
Sitting on Hadrian's Wall with one of my comrades, it's like a lovely sun trap.

ROBIN BIRLEY
Archaeologist
I'm always drawn back here. It's this combination of the scenery and the solitude. You're very close to nature and yet you're close to this incredible piece of bureaucracy running across it.

(At Denton Burn Turret)

GUY DE LA BÉDOYÈRE
I've been fascinated by Hadrian's Wall since I was a child, and it's not just the spectacular scenery that draws me back here. It's that there's still so much we don't understand about the Wall and why it was built.

This is Denton Burn on the outskirts of Newcastle and it's the first really meaningful stretch of Hadrian's Wall that survives to this day.

I'm standing in the doorway of a lookout tower which we call a turret, and over here are the remains of what probably supported a ladder or a stairway up to where the soldiers were able to look out north across the Wall. But when you've only got this amount of stonework, how can we ever really know what Hadrian's Wall actually looked like in Roman times? The answer is that we can't be certain.

You need to travel out to the central section of the wall to find the best-preserved stretches, and the best evidence of what the wall was really like.

Twenty miles to the west of Newcastle you reach the wilder up country. I'm going to meet up with Jim Crow, an archaeologist who has led excavations right along the wall.

(Standing on Hadrian's Wall, with Jim Crow)

This I suppose takes us technically out into the wilds of northern Britain beyond the Roman Empire, and actually you can see for miles in every possible direction. But is this where the wall would have ended, with the line of stones?

JIM CROW
Archaeologist
Well normally you'd expect to have a ditch, but here, because of the crags, there's no real need for a ditch. So the Wall stands prominent, imposing, a sort of great statement.

GUY DE LA BÉDOYÈRE
Of course it's a it's a really dinky little rural environment now, but would this actually have been a kind of really vicious, military no-man's land out here?

JIM CROW
Well I think to some extent it would be. There were Roman patrols no doubt. It's a statement. It's a statement of Roman military supremacy: the construction of a formidable, linear barrier.

GUY DE LA BÉDOYÈRE
Yes, but hang on. When Hadrian comes to Britain and builds this wall it's eighty years after Britain was invaded by the Romans. Why is he building a wall here and ending the Empire? Why isn't he just coasting straight on up and conquering Scotland?

JIM CROW
It's certainly true that in certain respects the creation of a formal frontier like this is an admission of defeat. It means the Romans are not going to be able to conquer the whole of the island of Britain. But on the other hand, Hadrian - throughout the Empire - is following a policy not of expansion but of consolidation.

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