The First Station: Segedunum or The Wall’s End
The Wall’s End, Wallsend. The large version has legible versions of names known to have been associated with building the wall.
When part of a building remains, we can sometimes comprehend the whole; but where nothing is left, conjecture is hazardous. This is our present case. No buildings are left in this Station, or any other, to guide the judgment. The spot, now a green pasture, about four acres, three miles and a half below Newcastle, gently declines to the river Tyne; is uneven, as having been covered with buildings. At the top of this green pasture, and parallel with the water, runs Severus’s Ditch; so that the Station lies between both.
From the beginning of Severus’s Ditch, to the water, the Wall, now gone, must have made a right angle, perhaps eighty yards or more, to the Tyne, so that this cross Wall would also make a right angle with the river. Here stood the Castle. The North corner of the Wall must have been where now stands a cottage, and have entered the water at what they call a trunk, or high timber bridge. I could not learn from tradition, that time had made any alterations in the tides. As securing this end of the Wall must have been a point of some magnitude, I have no doubt but the Romans took the advantage of low water, to form their butment as deep as circumstances would allow.
Here we see a town full of streets and houses, immured in stone walls; where every man, though a soldier, might,when not upon duty, follow his occupation.
The Bank and Ditch are nearly complete; the last is ten yards wide. Proceeding two hundred yards, it passes a house, late Cousen’s, now belonging to John Baddle, Esq. Then Slate’s house, to a stile in the valley. Now we rise a hill, with the Wall under the very path we tread. The ditch twelve yards wide. Along a close called Old Walker’s-Hill. Byker’s Hill. A hedge now runs in the Ditch, a part of which, this year, for the first time, is levelled, and converted into a bed of potatoes, which the proprietors will allow gratis, during three years, to anyone who will level, and improve the ground. This is the taste of the neighbourhood for the grandest piece of antiquity in the whole Island.
The Ditch now leaves a windmill close on the right, crosses the road from Newcastle to Shields, about thirty yards North of the toll gate. Goes down the steep hill called Ewsburn, and up to another windmill. Over Shield-field, where, by the name, I suppose a mile-castle has stood, and where the whole is invisible.
We now enter Newcastle, leaving a small part of the town on the right, or North side; but inclosing the principal, and perhaps the whole, when the works were erected. Its passage through these premises is unseen; but it must have been up and down steel hills, till we arrive at Pandon Gate.
During this space of three miles and a half, Severus’s Ditch is plainer, nearly all the way, than could be expected in so populous a country. Not the least remains of the Wall, Castles, or Turrets, are to be seen.
At the Wall’s end the first cohort had their station.
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