Significance of Benwell Vallum Crossing

The causeway at Benwell is the only visible surviving crossing of the Vallum, the earthwork which ran the length of Hadrian’s Wall.

Black and white photograph of the Vallum causeway at Birdoswald seen during excavation — A photograph of the Vallum causeway south of Birdoswald Roman Fort, taken during excavations in the 1930s, which revealed evidence of the foundations of a gate arch. (From Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society, 2nd series, 33 (1933)

Vallum Causeways

Apart from the one at Benwell, Vallum causeways are also known south of the Wall-forts at Housesteads, Great Chesters and Birdoswald. Only at Birdoswald was there clear evidence of a gate arch in the form of its foundations, of large blocks with lewis holes (for the insertion of hooks so that the blocks could be lifted by a crane), and, as at Benwell, a moulded block from its entablature.^[1]

Gate Arch

The monumental character of the two gate arches at Benwell and Birdoswald presumably represented the fact that the Vallum was an important boundary between different zones, perhaps of legal and administrative as well as of military importance.

READ MORE ABOUT BENWELL VALLUM CROSSING

FIND MORE PROPERTY HISTORIES

Footnote

1. FG Simpson and IA Richmond, ‘Report of the Cumberland Excavation Committee for 1932. Excavations on Hadrian’s Wall: I. Birdoswald’, Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society, 2nd series, 33 (1933), 246–62.