Dr. Francis McIntosh

I know, it's been a long time.

Exactly.

We were exploring the ruins properly, weren't we, rather than just pretending.

Yeah, I think so.

I mean, I'm a small finds archaeologist, you know, a collections curator.

I'm not

that interested in walls and shapes of buildings and more interested in what happened inside those buildings because you can relate to a lot more, can't you?

And, you know, if you can imagine how life for a normal person like yourself, hopefully I'm normal, you know, then I think it gets you more interested, doesn't it?

And gets you wanting to find out more.

Whereas if you can't at all place yourself there or imagine life there, you know, it's really difficult to sort of be interested.

Yeah, absolutely.

So we get

everyday information from inside the forts as well as outside the forts there's been a lot more work inside the forts you know the history of study has been a lot of men you know and also it's very influenced by the time that they're working in so often it's the military that's more interesting but there have been excavations and more so in more recent years and hopefully going forward into the settlements outside the forts and the I wouldn't say the non-military because they're all part of that wider military community but they're not you know enlisted soldiers yeah

No, not at all.

You know, people today, if they ever go to Catterick or, you know, anywhere around near Salisbury, the towns there are filled with people related to or providing a service for the army who are living inside the barracks.

That's just what Hayden's Wall was like, as any other sort of frontier on the Roman Empire.

It needed that sort of backup to keep it running.

So it was just about 73 modern miles, but 80 Roman miles.

And that 81 is important to understanding how it's constructed.

And it runs from Wall's End, which is just east of Newcastle, all the way to Bowness on Solway on the west coast.