Gents Mag 1851 part 2 p.504

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	Gentleman's Magazine 1851 part 2 p.504 [anti]quity, it is fortunate for the honour of our country, that Housesteads is now the property of the enlightened owner of Chesters, who fully appreciates its historical worth. The area of the station contains about five acres. It is situated upon elevated ground, bounded on the north by the great wall; on the east by a ravine, through which runs a stream; and on the south by a valley and a ridge, where was found an altar dedicated to Jupiter by the first cohort of the Tungrians, and the celebrated Mithraic cave. The walls are in a good state of preservation, from nine to sixteen courses of the facing-stones yet remaining. Like most, if not all, of the wall stations, they shew no traces of having been flanked with towers, and they are constructed wholly of stone without the bonding courses of tiles so common in the castra in the south of England. The gateways have double entrances, and are built of massives stones and flanked with guard-rooms. That on the western side, at the period of our visit, was being further and carefully excavated. It presented the appearance of having been hastily walled up or barricaded for the purppose of defence. As the entrances were defended with double doors of great strength, this inner wall was probably added after their destruction, but when and under what circumstances it is impossible to determine. Its speaks forcibly, however, of invasion, and of battles lost and won, such as the lower barrier must often have witnessesed in the days of Rome's decline and fall. The guard-chambers are well preserved; on the side wall of one of them is a phallus cut in the stone; the effluvium from animal matter with which those rooms were filled is still oppressively strong. It is probable that the station was occupied after the departure of the Romans, and the guard-rooms used as receptacles for refuse of all kinds. It is very easy to trace the course of the streets running from east to west and from north to south, and the remains of buildings cover the entire area. What these may be, and what they may contain, it is useless to speculate on; the pickaxe and spade are the only keys that can unlock the buried treasures. One Roman house has however survived the general overthrow; the external walls remain probably almost to their original altitude, and the foundations of the internal ones are distinct. The preservation of this rare extant example of a Roman house may be attributed to its having been found useful as a sheepfold - a purpose it has apparently been applied to for centuries. Leaving Housesteads we turned towards the south to visit Chester-Holme, the site of Vindolanda, situated on the ancient military road, at a considerable distance from the wall. A Roman mile-stone is yet standing by the side of the road, and numerous inscriptions and sculptured stones are preserved in the house belonging to the late Rev. A. Hedley, who made considerable researches in the station, and collected numerous objects of antiquity, all of which, except the inscribed stones, are now dispersed and probably lost. The cottage inhabited by Mr. Hedley, its offices and out-houses, are all built of stones taken from the station. Many of them have belonged to edifices of importance, and these are carefully walled up, and saved at least from any immediate danger. Inscriptions found here mention the fourth cohort of the Gauls, corresponding as in other instances with the order of the Notitia. As inns are but seldom to be met with in the wall district, it is important for the traveller to know that one called the "Twice Brewed," about two miles from Chester-Holme, on the roadside, affords good though homely accommodation. He will derive additional gratification in knowing that here Hutton took shelter in company with fifteen carriers, and gathered some laughable incidents for his amusing if not very antiquarian History of the Roman Wall. "A more dreary country," writes the octogenarian pedestrian as he approached the "Twice Brewed," "than this in which I now am, can scarcely be conceived. I do not wonder it shocked Camden. The country itself would frighten him, without the troopers." Dreary the country doubtless is, but it is not the dreariness of monotony, or of richer tracts of land without historical associations. The wall now exhibits a succession of
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	-- Hadrian's Wall
	-- Vindolanda
	-- Vercovicium

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