Thanks to the work of David & Margaret Blackett, the Knott Memorial Hall in Heddon has been successful in acquiring the 'Photographing the Roman Wall Exhibition’ touring as part of the Hadrian's Wall 1900 Festival.

This amazing collection of photographs were taken by Hexham Chemist, John Pattinson Gibson between 1886 and 1910. They were left in the care of Northumberland Archives. This year, Hadrian 1900 lottery funding has enabled a public exhibition. They have also been on display at Haltwhistle Town Hall and Hexham Abbey.

They will be on display in the Knott Memorial Hall, Heddon on the Wall from 31st October until 18th November.

Heddon Local History Society are hosting an introductory talk about the collection by Kate St Clair Gibson (Local Studies Librarian, Northumberland Archives) on Wednesday 9th November at 2pm in the Knott Hall.

Image dated c1955 - c1978 from Historic England

The shop was owned by the Gibson family, and was opened c1834, and closed c1978. J. P. Gibson, b.1838, became a notable photographer of archaeology, and helped to develop an artist style of photography in the late 19th century. The shop front and fittings were saved by the Science Museum in London, as the building was due for demolition, and are currently on display.

John Pattison Gibson was born in Hexham on 4th January 1838, the son of Clara and William Wilson Gibson, the local chemist.

He was educated at Hexham Grammar School and later Newcastle Grammar School after which he served his apprenticeship as a chemist.

Gibson became interested in photography in about 1856 when he had his portrait taken by a school friend in Newcastle. Shortly afterwards he bought a set of apparatus himself for 30 shillings and set up a portrait studio above his father's shop. When he took over father's chemist business, however, he gave up portraiture in favour of landscape photography. He became renowned as a highly distinguished photographer, winning in excess of 50 medals locally and abroad, most notably the Paris International Exhibition of 1899.

Gibson joined the Society of Antiquaries in 1883 and his interest in the Roman Wall grew. His first significant discovery was the Mucklebank Wall turret in 1891 which he happened upon thanks to a rabbit hole. He was involved in the excavation of the turret in 1892.

He later assisted in the excavations at Great Chesters from 1894-6, all the while using his photographs of the findings to report back to the Society.

In 1907-8 he worked with Frank Gerald Simpson in excavating the small fort at Haltwhistle Burn and then once again in 1909, together with F.G. Simpson, he excavated Milecastle 48. The report was published the following year (see link below) and is one of the most important excavation reports published on a site on Hadrian's Wall. In 1911 he was made a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries.

J. P. GIBSON, F.S.A., and F. GERALD SIMPSON (1911), The Milecastle on the Wall of Hadrian at the Poltross Burn. Transactions of the Cumberland & Westmorland Antiquarian & Archaeological Society 11 (series 2), p. 390 - 461.

Apart from his enthusiasm for archaeology and photography, Gibson was also a keen member of the local Volunteer Corps and retired as a Major in 1892.

John Pattison Gibson died in Hexham on 22 April 1912, aged 74.

John Pattison Gibson had eight children, one of whom was the renowned Hexham poet, Wilfrid Wilson Gibson  (1878-1962).

Heather land and bent-land,
Black land and white,
God bring me to Northumberland,
The land of my delight.

Land of singing waters,
And winds from off the sea,
God bring me to Northumberland,
The land where I would be.

Heather land and bent-land,
And valleys rich with corn,
God bring me to Northumberland,
The land where I was born.

'Northumberland' by Wilfrid Wilson Gibson, Hexham's People's Poet.

Wilfrid's sister, Elizabeth Gibson, later Elizabeth Gibson Cheyne (1869-1931), was also a published author and poet.

LINKS

Town's former chemist's has pride of place in London's Science Museum. Hexham Courant 19th November 2019

Hexham Local History Society: Gibson Shop Gallery

The village of Heddon on the Wall appears to have grown up around the location of the 12th Milecastle of Hadrian's Wall. The reasons quite why it did so, and the reasons a notable and early Saxon church (St Andrew's) was founded here are unknown (although see Ad Murum).

Perhaps the rocky mound on which the church was built, standing south of Hadrian's Wall and the Vallum, was already the site of a Roman shrine. However, of this we have no evidence. Maybe the Saxon settlers who chose the spot for their village just liked the view as we do today.

Milecastle 12 of Hadrian's Wall has never been definitively located although its measured location along the line of the Wall was considered to be within the enclosure west of Towne Gate. This was originally the site of Town Farm, later Tulip's Haulage Yard, and recently of the newly built development of houses known as Tulip Mews.

Archaeological investigation of the Town Farm site during this development failed to locate remains of the Milecastle once the farm buildings had been demolished although did reveal limited remains of the curtain Wall itself.

There are a few clues to the location of Milecastle 12:

It is possible that the cottages refered to by Bates were those of Mushroom Row.

Mushroom Row consisted of two rows of houses situated just north of the modern library, south of Chare Bank, which is a footpath which partly follows the ditch of the Vallum. After demolition of the houses in 1955 the site was used by the Amos Brother's Roman Wall Forge and is now the location of a large private house, Forge House.

However, as Bates mentions a "hill-top now covered with the ruins of cottages", this, and its location south of the Vallum, seem to make Mushroom Row an unlikley candidate.

The cottages he refers to are more likely to have been located in the enclosure that is now occupied by Tank House due west of the enclosure that held the buildings of Town Farm and the track which runs from the old road south towards Garden House.

Tank House is located on the north side of Chare Bank. The house name refers to the stone-built water tank that stood on this hilltop site. It was the village water supply from the mid C19th, fed from springs rising near East Heddon. It went out of use when a metal tank on legs was provided further south, close to the library.

The old plans and first edition Ordnance Survey map of Heddon on the Wall shown below show the presence of buildings within the enclosure surrounding Tank House. However, only one building remains there on the 25 inch to 1 mile map of 1897, clearly named, Tank House.

Graeme Stobbs (Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne) came to the same conclusion in a short note published in 2019 from which the following figure has been taken:

Plans show that Town Farm & the enclosure to its west (location of Tank House) were under the same ownership (numbered 5 on the Tithe Award Plan and named as ‘Messrs Orde, Collingwood and Dutton’ on Bell's Plan of 1856.

Stobbs reasons that:

The reason why Milecastle 12 was not located at the Town House farmyard in 1928 or in 2019, is that it actually sits some distance to the west, within the enclosure now known as Tank House Field (No. 1 on map). It might be objected that the eastern (Town Farm farmyard) possibility is one Roman mile from Milecastle 13, but it is well known that milecastles and turrets often lie slightly away from their measured positions for topographic reasons, and the higher ground of the Tank House enclosure may well have been preferred to the measured position. The site of the next milecastle to the east (11) is not established; measurement from its assumed position would place Milecastle 12 just to the west of the Town Farm site.

Archaeological evaluation work within Tank House Field has been quite limited and there is probable potential that remains of Milecastle 12 may well survive within the enclosure, probably to the north-west of the current dwelling house. This should be considered more likely to be the milecastle site than the Town Farm location.

In the photo shown above, the old road runs in the foreground of the above photo from left to right. This was the line of the Military Road (constructed in the 1750s, mainly on the foundations of Hadrian's Wall) and later the course of the A69 from Newcastle to Carlisle. The road closed when the bypass was built. The line of the Wall here lies just south of the road (the Wall perhaps had already been flattened by building within the village).

The track on the left also cuts through bed-rock, runs up towards the rear of Garden House, and divides the enclosures of the original Town Farm and Tank House.

This location is close to the suspected site of Milecastle 12, although it has never been found. Recent archaeology has shown it wasn't in its measured position under the buildings of Town Farm (later Tulip's Haulage Yard) slightly further east.

The road was widened in 1926. At the same time, or perhaps earlier, it was cut deep into sandstone bedrock (visible below the wall) to remove an unnecessary hill. As the milecastle wasn't revealed on the line of Hadrian's Wall further east there is a high possibility that it is located somewhere on the hill in the garden above the wall, the back garden of Tank House. There were old buildings here above the road, indicated on old plans, and it might of course have been completely destroyed.

UPDATE January 2023

Matthew Hobson (2021) proposes a more westerly location of MC12 "somewhere between the western boundary of the current development site and the Shell garage to the west that faces onto Hexham Road. Use of Ground Penetrating Radar could perhaps be used successfully to solve this long-standing question."

An archaeological watching brief at Heddon-on-the-Wall and the probable location of Milecastle 12 by Matthew S. Hobson. Archaeologia Aeliana, 5th series, vol. 50 (2021), pp. 115–132.

Two phases of trenched archaeological evaluation and a watching brief were conducted by Wardell-Armstrong LLP on two nearby plots of land, formerly belonging to Town Farm, and bisected by the projected line of Hadrian’s Wall at Heddon-on-the-Wall, Northumberland. The works were deserving of particular scrutiny because the measured location of Milecastle 12, one Roman mile east of the known location of Milecastle 13, falls squarely within the development area. Indeed, a discovery of a pivot stone, probably the northern gate of the milecastle, was recorded close to the west end of an outbuilding of Town Farm in 1926. A number of later investigations at Town Farm have recorded a high degree of truncation on the site and failed to locate traces of either the milecastle or of Hadrian’s Wall.

This has led to the commonly held belief that the remains of the milecastle were probably destroyed during the construction of farm buildings, or indeed earlier. The comprehensive redevelopment of the site, however, has allowed the collection of sufficient data to revisit this issue once again.

Two surviving sections of the Broad Wall were recorded during the watching brief over a 20-metre stretch, proving that later truncation had not removed the entirety of the Roman archaeology on this site. The southern edge of the Wall Ditch and its upper fills were observed in the north-east of the development area and in evaluation trenches excavated along the lane to the north. The only datable finds came from a medieval kiln of unknown function, situated between Hadrian’s Wall and the Wall Ditch. The kiln is similar in form to the one still visible at the western end of the extant stretch of the Wall, 70 metres to the east. This new discovery indicates that there may have been a group of such features in this area in use from approximately the mid-13th to mid-15th century AD. With the exception of the easternmost section of the Broad Wall and the medieval kiln, all of the archaeological discoveries were made within the area of the Scheduled Monument. Each of the significant archaeological deposits, including a buried land surface preserved beneath the Wall, was sampled, but no significant archaeobotanical results were obtained.

While no traces of Milecastle 12 were found, the work has led to the realisation that the discovery of 1926 was very probably made farther to the west than originally thought, where the now more accurately projected line of Hadrian’s Wall meets the former Carlisle to Newcastle main road.

DISCUSSION: THE PROBABLE LOCATION OF MILECASTLE 12

As noted above, the measured location of Milecastle 12 falls within the development area, more or less precisely at the north-west corner of the former farm buildings. The identification of preserved remains of Hadrian’s Wall at this location, in an area which had previously been assumed to have suffered complete truncation, warrants a reassessment of the probable location of this milecastle. The 2019 investigations have confirmed that the line of the Broad
Wall was positioned rather too far south to have been disturbed by the widening of the old Carlisle to Newcastle road in 1926 (referred to above). If the pivot stone discovered during the 1926 roadworks was indeed part of the in situ northern gate of Milecastle 12, the clear implication is that its location is likely to have been farther west, close to where the projected line of the curtain wall meets the remains of the old road. In our estimation the discovery of the pivot stone in 1926 is most likely to havebeen some 90m farther to the west than the measured location of the milecastle, as indicated on fig. 2.

Supporting the idea that the discovery in 1926 was made farther to the west, is the fact that in 1856 the development area and the neighbouring plot of land to the west were both
in possession of Messrs. Ord, Collingwood and Dutton. Stobbs (2020) has correctly observed that if these two plots of land could both be referred to as Town Farm, it would make sense of the fact that the pivot stone was described as having been found ‘close to the western end of an outbuilding of Town Farm’. The idea that the measured location of Milecastle 12 might have fallen west of the current development area, which he also refers to, cannot however be supported. The salient fact, which Stobbs does also note, is that the distance between the so called ‘milecastles’ varied depending upon the terrain and the need to communicate with forts on the Stanegate (Breeze 2006, 64–65). A discrepancy of 90m, between a measured hypothetical mile separating two adjacent milecastles and the actual distance, would be slightly more than the known average, but significantly less than the largest recorded discrepancy of more than 210m. The high level of truncation within the current development area leaves us with a high degree of uncertainty. It is still possible that the pivot stone was found during work linking up the east-west road with the north-south lane which separates these two plots of land. If any remains of the milecastle lay within the western half of the development area they are very likely to have been destroyed. The remaining uncertainty means that in future the location of the milecastle should be sought somewhere between the western boundary of the current development site and the Shell garage to the west that faces onto Hexham Road. Use of Ground Penetrating Radar could perhaps be used successfully to solve this long-standing question.

Many events at several venues around the village on Saturday 3rd September 2022.

LINK
Report in Hexham Courant, 8th September 2022.

English Heritage has recently renewed their interpretation boards for the restored section of hadrian's Wall on the east side of Heddon village. The two boards at each end of our section of the Wall feature reconstruction artworks by Peter Lorimer.

Following the excitement with the find of a section of Hadrians Wall on the Town Farm development site we now report on a new archaeology find, close to the eastern entrance.

We must await the full archaeology report but it is clearly a medieval or post-medieval corn-drying kiln, very simillar to that built into the conserved section of Hadrian's Wall, slightly further east, across Towne Gate.

The excavation was undertaken by an archaeologist from Wardell Armstrong, and my photos taken, with careful regard for health & safety, through the wire fence at the east entrance to the building site.

The location of the kiln is likley to lie close to, but just to the north of the line of Hadrian's Wall, which hadn't been visible in this area of the site.

Behind the circular part of the kiln in the foreground is a deep fire-pit bounded by large  masonry on the south side.

LINK

Wardell Armstrong - Tulip Mews, Heddon-on-the-Wall, Northumberland. Watching Brief Report (2020).

Photos below, taken in June 2017, are of the old Town Farm (Tulip's Yard) before demolition of the old buildings.

Photos below of the revealed section of Hadrian's Wall taken by Bill Pointer 8th March 2019.

Those who have followed developments of the former site of Town Farm, later Tulip’s Haulage Yard, on the East side of the village will have seen in the past weeks, the old, derelict buildings of the farmstead demolished, a new section of Hadrian’s Wall briefly found and cleared, and the site prepared for the building of five new bungalows.
 
I don’t know much about the early history of Town Farm but have speculated that it was in place in 1750 requiring the slight adjustment of General Wade’s Military Road from using the line (and foundations) of Hadrian’s Wall, west from Great Hill. This led to the preserved section of the Wall otherwise largely destroyed and covered by the road. This road, the first properly constructed road in Northumberland since Roman times, became the Newcastle to Carlisle Turnpike and later the A69, before it was abandoned and the bypass constructed.
 
Beside the old road, below the retaining wall of the Town Farm site, still stands a milestone recording a distance of 7 miles from Newcastle’s West gate. It is probably one of the original milestones of the turnpike road from around 1780.
 
The original farm may have adjoined the old buildings, incorporating both farmhouse and barn as one long building. The two-storey farmhouse still standing on the north side of the old road, previously Four Winds and now Glanville House, was probably a much later addition.
 
At one time, like much of the village, it was owned by the Clayton family. The farmer in 1901 was William Stephenson who lived in the farmhouse with his wife Sarah and six children. William had been born at Rudchester and was nephew of William Stephenson who founded Throckley Brick Works and whose son, Sir William Haswell Stephenson of the Throckley Coal Company was seven times Lord Mayor of Newcastle.
 
In 1901 a gamekeeper, George Charlton, lived in what is now Keepers Cottage. He died in 1931 and has a gravestone in St Andrew’s churchyard erected by Brigadier General Sir Loftus Bates of Heddon Hall ‘in memory of an old friend’.
 
There was a large fire at Town Farm in 1913 which destroyed buildings and livestock. It was fought by local people until the fire brigade arrived from Newburn, alerted by a youth on a bicycle.
 
In 1918 it was bought for £3000, along with many of the other village properties, by Sir James Knott who had a vision of turning Heddon into a model village. However, after the events of the First War and loss of his two sons, his interest in the village came to an end. Town Farm was Lot 1 in his sale of 1924. Town Farm, on the site of the Roman Wall, including 38 acres of old grass land, was sold to Adam and James Hedley for £2800. They were already faming Bays Leap, bought from the Claytons in 1918. James Knott retained the small field containing the currently preserved section of Hadrian’s Wall which he later instructed to be gifted to the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne.
 
Around 1927, Town Farm was rented from the Hedleys by William Ward Sanderson. He lived in the farmhouse and farmed the fields on the east side of the village, milking cows in a parlour at the farmstead, cutting hay on the site of the Roman Wall and running a local shop selling cigarettes and confectionary. The end of farming came when the land was sold for the building of the Vallum housing estate in the 1950s. The farm buildings became part of Tulip’s Yard, base for a successful haulage company.
 
The wall of the farm next to the old road sported adverts for the local shop and a Heddon on the Wall road-sign on a photo of army cadets resting on the grass below taken around 1950. Part of this photo was used on the album of The Eton Rifles by The Jam in 1979.
 
Demolition of the farm buildings in the past weeks and thorough archaeological excavation of the site has revealed the continuation of Hadrian’s Wall in two runs of large stones marking the lower course of its north face, and rubble core set in clay remaining below the old buildings. Most of the stones had been previously robbed and presumably reused elsewhere, perhaps including the church and even the buildings of Town Farm. Milecastle 12, known by measurement to be in this vicinity, hasn’t yet been found and may have been further west, perhaps under the garden north of Tank House. Similar remains of the Wall are known to exist below the tarmac of General Wade's road something that causes all sorts of problems for utility companies wanting to dig holes.
 
Cadwallader Bates in his History of Heddon published 1886: This mile-castle probably stood to the east of the pond, on the hill-top now covered with ruins of cottages. The Rev. G. Bowlker, vicar of Heddon, has heard that the people who lived in these cottages, in digging a hole in front of them for burying a horse, came on old foundations and what they described as a grave-stone with letters on it. This they promptly broke up.
 
Nothing has been agreed to date but interest has been expressed in the village obtaining at least some of the Hadrian’s Wall stones if they are not wanted elsewhere, perhaps to enhance the area around the Victrix sculpture, letting us put the centurion close to a little part of the fabric of the original Roman Wall.

Map rendering provided by houseprices.io free to use under Creative Commons Attribution Licence CC BY 4.0

The sections below are taken from:
Wardell Armstrong - Tulip Mews, Heddon-on-the-Wall, Northumberland. Watching Brief Report (2020).

In addition to remains associated with Hadrian’s Wall, the watching brief also identified a well preserved stone‐lined kiln with associated firepit and flue. The kiln was initially considered to be associated with the Roman activity at the site, but the recovery of several sherds of medieval pottery from the feature (the only medieval pottery recovered anywhere during the watching brief) and its location on the northern side of the Wall has highlighted that it relates to a later phase of activity, probably the 14th or 15th century. Apart from the recovery of oak charcoal, primarily from the firepit, no indication of use of the kiln was identified, although it is possible that the feature was used as a corn drying kiln similar to the medieval kiln built into the extant section of the Wall immediately to the east of the site.

LINKS

The Wall at Heddon

Heddon History - Hadrian's Wall

Hadrian's Wall on Tyneside (pdf)

Hexham Courant - 19th March 2019

Having taken part in the pilot study of the Hadrian's Wall Stone Sourcing & Dispersal Project I thought I would try to find out a little more about the Roman stone shown above.

Along with two other carved stones (probably not Roman), it sits on the inside window-ledge of the window at the west end of the north aisle, inside the little meetings room divided by glass panels from the bulk of the church.

It appears not to have an inscription but its size and moulding bears much resemblance to other stones found along Hadrian's Wall which record the particular centurial unit involved with building or maintaining a specific length of the Wall's fabric.

The Stone Sourcing and Dispersal project (SS&D, also known as Where’s Hadrian’s Wall Gone?) is part of a proposed three year project, the Hadrian’s Wall Community Archaeology Project, which in parallel with the SS&D will be working with community groups to investigate a significant number of areas along the entire length of the Wall that are currently classified as Heritage at Risk. Work will also be carried out to take action, working with the community, to ameliorate the risks to the Wall.

During the Jacobite uprising of 1745, the government forces based in Newcastle, under Field Marshall George Wade, were unable to cross to Carlisle in time to intercept the rebels and in fact bad weather and poor roads halted them near Hexham.
 
It was reported that departing Newcastle’s Town Moor on the 16th November, infantry only made it to Ovington by night. The roads were “terribly broken and full of ice” and men were sent out with lights and carts to bring them up, a process that went on till the march was continued next morning at nine. The first troops reached Hexham about four that afternoon, the rear at midnight, when, they could proceed no further because of the snow. They pitched camp on the south side of the union of the two Tynes and were provided with straw by the townsfolk who also kindled fires all over the ground as a protection against the severe cold. Wade waited three days for a thaw and, when none came, returned to Newcastle. He arrived on 22nd November, his army almost spent with fatigue and having failed dismally to halt the progress of the rebels.
 
One of Wade’s party, Thomas Sayer, later reported, “That he is well acquainted with the Road from Carlisle to Hexham, which is mostly through an open Country, with very few Houses, not One Part in Ten of the said Road being through inclosed Grounds: That the Country is rocky, mountainous, and boggy, and absolutely impassable, both in Summer and Winter, for heavy Carriages; and there are several Waters in the said Road, which frequently overflow and render it impassable.” The maps designated it as a ‘Summer Road’.
 
In 1749 a letter from the Duke of Northumberland with attached petition was referred to the Surveyor General. They asked “That Leave be given to bring in a Bill for laying out, making, and keeping in Repair, a Road proper for the Passage of Troops and Carriages between the said City of Carlisle and Town of Newcastle, in such Manner as to the House shall seem meet.”

In July to September 1749, a survey was undertaken by two military engineers, Dugal Campbell and his assistant Hugh Debbeig. Although it is often called ‘General Wade’s Military Road’, Field Marshall Wade (to give him his correct rank) in fact died in his home in Bath in 1748 and there is no evidence he had anything to do with it. It is suggested, however, that a possible instigator of the proposal, Lancelot Allgood  of Nunwick, who became Sheriff of Northumberland in 1745, may have heard, first hand, the Field Marshal’s bitter remarks about the roads over which he had just struggled to Hexham, comparing them with roads that he (Wade) had made in the Highlands some years before. Allgood became a Member of Parliament in 1749 and was actively associated not only with the Military Road but also with the Corn Road from Hexham to Alnmouth.
 
The outcome of the survey was a map measuring about ten feet six inches long by two feet wide covering five sheets joined together to make a roll. It covered an area roughly sixty miles long (i.e. from about three miles east of Newcastle to about two miles west of Carlisle) by about six miles broad at a scale of just over two inches to the mile. There are five insets all concerned with the Roman Wall and its attendant works and the course of the proposed road is shown as a dotted line co-incidental with the Wall from Newcastle to a point nearly thirty miles west. The surveyors estimated the cost of the road as £22,450.

I've been trying out some new software from my local archaeology group that makes 3D models from a set of digital photos.

Below is my trial of the west end of Heddon's preserved section of Hadrian's Wall.

It is for those who are not able to visit it (or sit on it, as I do from time to time). Click the big arrow to load the model, use the controls to alter rendering and the computer mouse to rotate (left-button and drag), pan (right button and drag) and zoom (wheel or ctrl-drag). For the truely immersive experience switch on full-screen mode!

It's just like being there yourself.

Shown here is a short section of Hadrian’s Wall at the west end of a length of preserved Wall about 255m long, consolidated and in the care of English Heritage, just east of Heddon on the Wall village. This represents a part of the planned ‘broad wall’; further west the structure was reduced in thickness to save time and resources.

The broad wall at Heddon is between 2.8m and 3m wide and up to 1.7m (7 courses) high. The rubble core was originally set in puddled clay, but was reset in mortar to preserve the section when it was consolidated. The first 12m at the west end has only the outer face exposed.
At the west end (NZ 13622 66942) a circular kiln was built into the wall in medieval times, probably to dry corn. It measures 1.9 m in diameter, has a paved floor, and the surrounding wall has a maximum height of 0.7 m (3 courses). The flue is in the south-west arc and is 1.4 m wide.

For those missing a visit to St Andrew's Churchyard, please see the 3D model below.

A flat-topped, table- or chest-tomb from the late eighteenth century, located in the graveyard close to the west end of St Andrew’s Church, Heddon on the Wall, UK. There are inscriptions on the top and on the two end slabs and on the south-facing side of a long slab concealed beneath, but these are not well resolved in the 3D model and largely captured by the texture.

The inscriptions are transcribed on this site under number [90] where there are also some standard, 2D photos.

If you are more interested in prehistoric rock art, there is another model here.