Stories of the Scottish Border — Chapter 48 The Nine Nicks o' Thirlwall

*The Nine Nicks o' Thirlwall* If you stand upon Rose Hill, which rises from the banks of the river Irthing just where Northumberland meets Cumberland, you have lying around you one of the finest wild prospects in the United Kingdom.

Hills to the north, stretching away into Scotland; hills to the east, broken into picturesque valleys, especially the great gap through which rushes the young Tyne; hills to the south, dominated by the powerful head of Cross Fell, a great sprawling mountain, not a peaked one, the highest stretch of which is nearly three thousand feet above sea level.

But while drinking in the glories of the distances, the eye will note with curiosity a strange-looking but picturesque hill only a couple of miles to the South-east, with a long rocky ridge at its top deeply cut into or "nicked" in nine different places, this giving it a very wild appearance.

It is one of these hills which tempts the keen observer to go on and explore it.

If we cut direct to it, over the fields, it is rough going, but the view is good all the way.

And there are four special objects of interest, all close together; the rushing Tipalt river, Thirlwall Castle, the Roman wall, and the Nine Nicks.

Thirlwall Castle rises tall, square, and stern, with a dark fir-wood behind it at the foot of the hill, where a bend in the river makes a natural moat.

Approaching it from Rose Hill, it looks as if the building were still nearly complete, but the south side has almost entirely fallen away and all the floors and the roof are out.

Edward I. slept in this Castle when it was newly built, in 1306; but now it is grass-grown and moss-grown, and its three bare walls rise gaunt and grim to the sky.

It is entirely built out of stones with Roman chisel marks, taken from the great Roman wall, which unfortunately was once regarded as a handy stone-quarry for anyone to take from.

The name "Thirlwall" means "Drill-wall," and marks the spot as that at which the wild Northern tribes first "drilled" or broke through the wall.

The name was, of course, given to the place long before this castle was built.

To mount from Thirlwall Castle to the top of the Nine Nicks is an easy enough task for any vigorous person.

It is just a fine healthy scramble.

When at the top, it becomes evident that some sort of fortification once existed there.

In point of fact this was the important Roman station called "Magna" which stood at about the middle of the Roman Wall.

The wall ran from sea to sea, that is to say, from the mouth of the Tyne to the Solway.

Thus it was nearly eighty miles long, and a very elaborate structure indeed.

It consisted of three distinct portions:-- 1. The main stone wall, with a ditch to the north of it.

2. An earth-work to the south of this, consisting of either two or three ramparts about seventy feet apart, with a ditch between.

8. Stations, Castles and Watch-towers.

Sometimes these were to the north of the wall, sometimes in the middle, sometimes south, according to the nature of the country.

The height of the main wall was from sixteen to twenty feet, including battlements.

It was six to nine feet thick.

Fancy a powerful military wall of about eighteen feet high stretching nearly eighty miles right across England!

It hardly seems possible that the Romans could undertake such a work.

The square strong stones were carefully selected and often brought from quarries at a distance.

These stones flanked the outsides of the wall, and in between was strong concrete which was poured in while in liquid.

The second wall was of earth and stones, and, of course, lower than the first.

Then there was a castle every mile, some of which can still be clearly traced, and a "station," about every four miles, of which several interesting ruins remain.

There was a road eighteen feet wide between the two walls.

Those who have the energy to toil on for a full dozen miles of rough walking, along the wall, eastward from Thirlwall, will be rewarded by some of the most romantic scenes in Britain.

They will see the wall at its best.

They will pass Whinshields, the highest point in the wall, 1230 feet above sea level.

The wild Northumbrian lakes will lie at their feet; if the day is fine, the Solway will be seen glistening, thirty miles to the west; and on the east the eye follows the Tyne almost to the sea.

The Pennine Ridge bars the view twenty miles to the south, while on the North the High Cheviot is clear and strong, thirty miles away.

Passing Whinshields, it is not far to Borcovicus (often called Housteads) where lie the remains of a large Roman Station, wonderful remains, showing the whole outline with startling clearness.

This station covered five acres, and here was quartered a cohort of the Tungrian infantry, consisting of a thousand brave soldiers, servants of Imperial Rome.

But, after all, nothing is so impressive as the remains of the wall itself.

Stand at the top either of Whinshields or of the Nine Nicks, and try to imagine what it looked like in Roman days.

Eastward along the Tyne valley and westward along the Irthing valley ran this wonderful work, this powerful girdle of stone.

The very spot was chosen with great judgment, for these valleys gave the Romans a district protected by the bleak hills, where they could live and where they could keep cattle and grow grain.

But the hilly nature of the ground must have added to the difficulty of the builders.

The wall had to run up steep hill sides and cling to the edge of cliffs, and precipices; it had to be carried by bridges over roaring torrents, and when it reached low-lying ground it had to avoid the treacherous swamps and morasses.

And yet, despite every obstacle, the great wall ran on its direct way, as strong and persistent as the great people who built it.

It withstood the shock of war, it was not flung down by soldiers marching against it.

But to the people who wanted to build castles or houses or farms, or even to mend roads, the wall offered a mass of material ready to hand, and it suffered not from man's energy so much as from his laziness.

Century after century it was robbed of its stones;

to-day a series of long grass-grown mounds, a few feet high, running across the meadows, are nearly all that remain of one of the most wonderful pieces of building that was ever erected in Great Britain.

Even today, in its decay, it is one of the most romantic features of a highly romantic district.