Tristan Hughes

Like, do we know much about the aqueducts and the running of water that way for forts along Hadrian's Wall?

What you would see?

Do you think it would be, is it realistic actually to say that someone stationed at one of the forts, let's say they've got permission to leave the fort, maybe with their family and go somewhere, I'm not thinking of a Butlins or a holiday, but to travel somewhere, that there was potential that they would travel north of the wall, they would visit somewhere north of the wall.

They wouldn't be scared out of their wits to go beyond this frontier.

It's not like we talked about escorts earlier, that every person who goes north of the wall to visit that industry has to be escorted by 10 soldiers to get there and back.

it's just because you're within the empire doesn't mean there are no brigands or you know no completely francis we've covered lots of different questions i've got a couple just to finish off at its height the height of hadrian's wall how many people do we think men women and children i know it must be so difficult to get an estimate but do we think would have been living at settlements all along hadrian's wall so the forts and i guess the settlements that grew up around them

Yeah, completely.

You mentioned earlier how this is several centuries that the Romans are manning the walls and how it's like us going back to 1725, 300 years ago.

How do we think everyday life changes as we get to the end of Roman Britain and you get those frontier communities that have been living there for generations, quite frankly, by that point?

But that just shows, doesn't it, how the everyday life of these people, even though those communities, those faults, they endure past the end of Roman Britain, that it does very much change.

And so we've largely focused on the beginning of the 3rd century AD, stressing once again how parts of daily life would have changed over those many different centuries.

But still, it's a wonderful way to explore the story of Hadrian's Wall.

We have done in the past the story of the big monuments and the stone and what it's made up of and everything.

But to do this one where we've been able to explore different parts of actually someone stationed on the world and learn more about their lives and what they would have experienced, it gives you a much more human experience of what is one of the most famous, one of the most recognisable ancient landmarks in Britain.

An ordinary life indeed.

Frances, this has been absolutely fascinating.

It just goes for me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come back on the show.

Well, there you go.

There was Dr. Francis McIntosh talking you through a day in the life of someone on Hadrian's Wall.

Daily life, how to survive on this northern frontier of the Roman Empire.