The North

Across the width of northern England, from Wallsend on the Tyne Estuary on the north-east coast to Bowness on the Solway Firth on the north-west coast, runs Hadrian’s Wall, that great wall built by the Romans in the reign of the Emperor Hadrian to defend the part of the British Isles they had conquered. They never retreated south of the Wall but they never succeeded in holding any of the country north of it, either. It cuts across the two most northerly counties of England, Northumberland and Cumbria, running well south of the Scottish border. There was fighting on the Wall itself and on both sides of it from the second century AD, when it was built, until long after the union of England and Scotland. Only after the Stuart dynasty ended was there official peace, and even then murderous family feuds and a little cattle-rustling and sheep-stealing were expected in the area.