Wall

Product Description

Hadrian's Wall is the largest most spectacular & one of the most enigmatic historical monument in Britain. Nothing else approaches its vast scale: a land wall running 73 miles from east to west & a sea wall stretching at least 26 miles down the Cumbrian coast. Many of its forts are as large as Britain's most formidable medieval castles & the wide ditch dug to the south of the Wall the vallum is larger than any surviving prehistoric earthwork. Built in a ten-year period by more than 30 000 soldiers & labourers at the behest of an extraordinary emperor the Wall consisted of more than 24 million stones giving it a mass greater than all the Egyptian pyramids put together. At least a million people visit Hadrian's Wall each year & it has been designated a World Heritage Site. In this new book based on literary & historical sources as well as the latest archaeological research Alistair Moffat considers who built the Wall how it was built why it was built & how it affected the native peoples who lived in its mighty shadow. The result is a unique & fascinating insight into one of the Wonders of the Ancient World.