GUY DE LA BÉDOYÈRE
So what do we know about the man who came to Britain round the year 120 and ordered the building of the Wall? Hadrian was a provincial from Spain, not an Italian at all. He was a brilliant all rounder. He was educated, a decorated soldier, an architect and also a formidable strategist. And wherever he went, he left his mark.

(Guy talking with Robin Birley at Walltown Crags)

ROBIN BIRLEY
Archaeologist
This is the end of the Empire. If you live to the north you're outside the empire whether you like it or not. And just as important, if you live down there you're in it - whether you like it or not.

GUY DE LA BÉDOYÈRE
Robin Birley is an ex-Royal Marine, as well as an archaeologist. He's lived and worked on the Wall most of his life.

Robin, if ever there was a wonder of the ancient world it's got to be this - Hadrian's Wall. But it's so closely tied to that one man.

ROBIN BIRLEY
As far as we know, when he comes to into power he reviews the situation Empire wide, and of course he puts out this edict saying "We've got too much territory. We can't afford any more. Let us hold what we've got". And, everywhere he goes he starts building permanent frontiers. In the Rhine, because it's perfect wood territory through the forests, it's a timber one. In North Africa with sand it's just a road with forts along it. Here, this is perfect stone building territory. There's stone all over the place, there are all the components needed for a stone wall. And so he determines it will be in stone.

GUY DE LA BÉDOYÈRE
Altogether the wall stretches nearly eighty miles, from the outskirts of Newcastle in the east, to the Solway Firth in the west. It really is one of the most remarkable feats of civil engineering ever undertaken. Nearly four million tons of rock were quarried by hand, and hauled in wagons up to the crags and ridges where the wall was built.

ROBIN BIRLEY
The key man here is the mason who's actually laying the stones to make the wall. He's got to be backed up by fifteen, twenty, twenty-five people getting the materials to him, and it's not just a question of going to the local building firm and saying, 'Send me five tons of sand'. Someone's got to find a quarry and dig the stuff up. Someone's got to go to the sand stone quarries, get down rock and then cut it into shape - then bring it here.

GUY DE LA BÉDOYÈRE
That sounds like an incredibly hard life to me. What sort of man was our Roman soldier and how was he able to cope with this level of work?

ROBIN BIRLEY
Well, the thing to bear in mind is that he's a lot stronger than we are today. We are supposed to be the weakest members of the human race ever. They were far stronger physically, and they weren't confined by our silly ideas of an eight hour day, or five day week and all that nonsense!

GUY DE LA BÉDOYÈRE
What about a lunch break?

ROBIN BIRLEY
Oh well I suppose you have to to feed them now and again. But you know, in the weather we have here at this time of the year, I would imagine them starting work at five in the morning and going on till ten at night.

(At Limestone Corner)

GUY DE LA BÉDOYÈRE
Building a wall right the way across northern Britain seems a most extraordinary thing for anyone to do, let alone in an age that had no dynamite and no machines. But Hadrian's Wall was in fact only one part of a whole complex of defensive installations. On each side of the wall the Roman army built ditches.

This is the northern ditch, this huge scoop out that I'm standing in the middle of here. It was dug out with sheer muscle, water, wedges, and metal chisels. But even for the Roman army, the indefatigable Roman army, there were times when they thought !!!! this for a game of soldiers.

This is one boulder that they abandoned, and you can see what the Roman military engineers were trying to do right here. In order to hack these boulders out of the living rock to create the ditch, they were using wooden wedges, dressed into holes that they'd prepared with metal chisels. They then soaked the wooden wedges with water, and waited for them to swell. That made the rock crack along natural lines and fissures, and they were able to haul out the broken ruins, to dig out this ditch.

Well on this particular occasion, they gave up. The wedge holes are still here, they obviously just couldn't be bothered.

(Aerial shots of the Wall)

Although the remains really are spectacular up on the crags, what's left is only a pale shadow of the Wall in its original glory. Most of the stone has long since gone, much of it robbed out, a handy source of pre-dressed blocks for anyone with a field wall or a house to build.

To get an idea of what Hadrian's Wall would actually have looked like, the best place to go is Wallsend, in the shadow of the shipyards on the River Tyne. Bill Griffiths is part of a team who've pulled together what we know about the wall to build this reconstruction.

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