Hadrian's Wall
— — the line the empire drew and the heather kept.
Not only on a wall.
“Seventy-three miles of Roman stone running across the neck of England, from the Tyne to the Solway. Sheep crop the turf along the same crest the legions walked. At Housesteads the wind comes straight off the Whin Sill and doesn't stop. The wall is lower now than it was, but the line it cut into the country still reads from the air. — from the studio
Hadrian's Wall, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Hadrian's Wall runs roughly 73 miles across northern England, from Wallsend on the River Tyne to Bowness-on-Solway in Cumbria. Construction began in AD 122 under the emperor Hadrian as the northwestern frontier of the Roman Empire. The wall climbs the crags of the Whin Sill, a dolerite escarpment that gave the Romans a natural rampart through Northumberland. UNESCO inscribed it in 1987 as part of the Frontiers of the Roman Empire World Heritage Site. English Heritage manages the most-visited forts, with Vindolanda and Housesteads drawing the largest share of walkers each summer.
The wall was built in two fabrics. East of the River Irthing the Romans used coursed sandstone, faced and rubble-cored, originally about three metres thick and four to five metres high. West of the Irthing the first phase was turf, later rebuilt in stone. A milecastle stood every Roman mile, with two turrets between each pair, and larger garrison forts at Housesteads, Chesters, and Birdoswald anchored the line. Much of the dressed stone was robbed across the medieval centuries for churches and farms throughout Northumberland and Cumbria.
The Hadrian's Wall Path runs 84 miles coast to coast and is one of fifteen National Trails in England, opened in 2003. Most walkers take six or seven days west to east to keep the prevailing wind behind them. Vindolanda continues active excavation each summer; its museum holds the writing tablets recovered from waterlogged Roman ditches. Housesteads sits high on the Whin Sill above the most-photographed stretch of wall. The AD 122 bus runs the central section between Easter and October for walkers covering shorter days.