Professor Rob Collins

Those are big castles with a royal budget.

It might be, you know, we're looking six to 700 years later, it might actually be easier to quarry fresh stone than to dig up some remains of Roman buildings and reuse that stone, because then they can also shape the stone as they need for those castles.

A counterpoint are some of the smaller castles like Thirlwall Castle near Greenhead, which is built almost entirely of stone from Hadrian's Wall.

And that's a really interesting castle because it's built in the 14th century, almost entirely from wall stone.

It doesn't have later modifications either.

So we can see it almost as a single build.

And if you run the math, you can build that castle really only needing about 300 meters of Hadrian's Wall in terms of material.

And it's modest for a castle.

It's hardly Carlisle Castle or Newcastle or Annick.

But it's not small either.

You know, I think we'd all be very happy to live in something like Thirlwall Castle.

You know...

But the fact that that can be built with only about 300 meters of wall, if it was standing to full height, I think is really kind of telling.

So as many castles that we have up here in the border counties, they still wouldn't really denude Hadrian's Wall of all its stone.

And in that sense, you kind of have to think about those other historical needs.

Why would they take apart Hadrian's Wall?

Is it easy to do?

More of the destruction comes from farmers from the 18th century.

Once the English-Scottish border is, people are confident that the peace will last, it's more farmers kind of saying, actually, I can expand the farm.

I can make this farm more profitable.