HADRIAN’S WALL.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 6 December 1924, Page 12

HADRIAN’S WALL.

ENGLAND’S PROTECTION AGAINST SCOTLAND.

One would hardly have looked for discussion on. Hadrian’s Wall as one of the incidents of question-time in the House of Commons, but even if the hirst Commissioner of Works had to plead that he was not allowed to use public funds for the repair- of the wall, t-iie .supplementary questions were interesting as shewing that .there is still s 9 n ?*j feeling in Scotland on the subject of the wall.- states a correspondent of the.. Manchester Guardian. Air. Kirkwood declared that, ’/“like most things English, it was a miserable failure,” and; rio one seems to have troubled to point out.,to him that the English had about as much to do' with Hadrian’s Wall as the member, for Dumbarton- himself. And although his charge of miserable ' failure 1 /was supported by a Glasgow .-Uq.imiist member, is not now, such a statement a little unfair to the builders, restorers, and defenders of the wall? On the whole, its history seems to suggest that,, as long as it couLd be garrisoned, it was exceedingly efficient for its purpose of protecting the South from the forays ai i >--e wild tribes of the North.

The original goes back beyond Hadrian, for it was Agricola, nearly half a century earlier, who conceived the idea of a fortification to. keep out the Caledonians and Piets. Hadrian ordered the great wall to he built when !-P visited Britain in A.D. 120, and Seven’s repaired and strengthened the •wall about ninety years later. A very formidable barrier it was, probably about eighteen feet high, with its ditch and ca.rthe.rn mound and Sts intermediate forts and watch towers. For nearly 300 years from Agricola’s first •''“’"ficn the Homan peace was maintained and the wild tribes kept out, ar.d it was only when Constantine- withdrew the garrisons in 407 that the Piets and Scots began to surge in. Hadrian’s Wall was no. “miserable failure,”