button to main menu  Gents Mag 1851 part 1 p.150

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Gentleman's Magazine 1851 part 1 p.150
"All the gateways except the north have been explored, and present very interesting subjects of study to the antiquary. The western part is in the best condition, and is specially worthy of attention. Its arrangements will readily be understood by an inspection of the ground plan, which is here introduced. ...

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This gateway, as well as the others which have been, is, in every sense of the word, double. Two walls must be passed before the camp can be entered; each is provided with two portals, and each portal has been closed with two-leaved gates. The southern entrance of the outside wall has alone as yet been entirely cleared of the masonry that closed it. The jambs and pillars are formed of massive stones of rustic masonry. The doors, if we may judge from the fragments of corroded iron which have been lately picked up, were of wood, strengthened with iron plates and studs; they moved, as is appaprent from the pivot-holes, upon pivots of iron. In the centre of each portal stands a strong upright stone, against which the gates have shut. Some of the large projecting stones of the exterior wall are worn, as if by the sharpening of knives upon them. ... The guard-chambers on each side are in a state of choice preservation, one of the walls standing fourteen courses high. Were a roof put on them, the antiquary might here stand guard, as the Tungrians of old, and for a while forget that the world is sixteen centuries older than it was when these chambers were reared. At least two of the chambers in this part of the camp have been warmed by U-shaped flues running round three of their sides beneath the floor. These chambers, when recently excavated, were found to be filled with rubbish so highly charged with animal matter as painfully to affect the sensibilities of the labourers. The teeth and bones of oxen, horns resembling those of the red deer, but larger, and boars' tusks were very abundant; there was the usual quantity of all the kinds of pottery used by the Romans."
The Vignette subjoined to this article (in p.154) represents the western portal of the station Amboglanna, now called Birdoswald, as seen from the inside.
"It exhibits the pivot-holes of the gates, and the ruts worn by the chariots or wagons of the Romans. The ruts are nearly four feet two inches apart, the precise gauge of the chariot-marks in the east gateway at Housesteads. The more perfect of the pivot-holes exhibits a sort of spiral grooving, which seems to have been formed with a view to rendering the gate self-closing. The aperture in the sill of the doorway, near the lower jamb, has been made designedly, as a similar vacuity occurs in the eastern portal; perhaps the object of it has been to allow of the passage of surface water from the station. The whole of the area of the camp is marked with the lines of streets and the ruins of buildings."
In addition to these stations the wall was provided with castella, now called Mile Castles, quadrangular in form, and measuring usually from 60 to 70 feet in each direction; and subsidiary to these were turrets or watch-towers of about eight to ten feet square; the latter of these have in comparatively recent times, been destroyed, and the castella have not shared a much better fate. In all these buildings it is remarkable that no tiles, so common in the Roman structures in the south, have been used; they are only to be found in the foundations and hypocausts of the domestic edifices within the stations. By comparison, many other points of difference will also be noticed. The fortresses erected by the Romans on the line of the "Littus Saxonicum" are of more imposing appearance, of wider area, and possess higher architectural pretensions; but these two great chains of stone fortresses, the maritime to repel the Saxons and Franks, the inland to defend against the Picts and Scots, were both admirably adapted for those purposes. In the north, the wall itself was the main protection, and the number of the castra was requisite to sustain intercourse and rapid communication. In the south, the sea was to a certain extent a defence,
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