Tristan Hughes

So I'm presuming those fortifications are maintained.

But what about elsewhere along the wall?

You know, those long stretches between forts and mile castles and so on.

If you don't have a dux Britannic or Britanniorum anymore, kind of a central authority sending supplies up, does the rest of the wall fall into disrepair quite quickly?

You might have the villa of Septimius Severus as well.

Because it's so interesting because...

On the other side of that kind of romantic perspective, maybe romantic is the wrong word, but a common idea we have is after the Romans leave and then within a century or so, you have armies of Picts or maybe Vikings later or Saxons, Angles and the like before.

kind of coming down from the north and, I don't know, with battering rams or just tearing apart the wall and then running through it and then running rampage in what is today kind of northern England.

But it sounds like there isn't the archaeological evidence for that.

And also, I guess, when you do go those stories later, you know, of

Vikings attacking Lindisfarne or whatever.

Or even, I guess, in the case of the Picts, I think I keep using the Picts, but of course, they're not just warlike figures.

They're more than that.

But in the case of raiders, they'll use the sea.

They'll go around, right?

And that's the idea as well, I guess.

Yes, actually, and that also hits upon another point.

If we go back to those early kingdoms that emerge in those old Roman forts in, let's say, the 5th century, I guess by also using those forts…

They control the traffic.

So they can control trade going north and south of the wall.