Vindolanda and Hadrian’s Wall: Remnants of the Roman Empire, Helen Charlie Nellist

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Acting as the custodian of records and supervisor at Vindolanda, Helen Charlie Nellist serves as the co manager at the Roman Army Museum, demonstrating her deep dedication to preserving the past.

Well, hello, listeners! Oh my gosh, it is an exciting day here. I'm with Helen Charlie Nellist. Hello there, Helen!

Hello! How you doing?

In the recent episode, 213, Helen Charlie Nellist amazed us with a glimpse into her background and the fascinating journey that led her to specialize in Roman ruins and ancient letters. All stemming from her vivid childhood imagination.

Well, today she continues our journey by recounting those stories that have been uncovered.

Essentially there was Andrew Birley, Marta Alberti , Penny Trichler, and uh, any, anybody who was a member of the Galloway family that was actually living at the Headley Center, , could do a bit of a dig to see if they can get some stuff out. And fortunately it worked out great because our SMC, which is our scheduled monument consent, that usually runs for five years. was extended for an extra year. So essentially we had a three years worth of digging. And when we got back from, , from lockdown, we had, , our volunteer guides, unfortunately not myself, cause I was working at the time. , but some of our volunteer guides actually turned up to do, , A sort of, a practice, socially distanced excavation, which was really fun.

, Vindolanda, of course, as well, , as that we have, , lots and lots of tours that we do. Uh, we, we're always interested in, in keeping it entertaining as well. , through the summer we're actually having a bit of a break through in July and August, , from our excavations.

Largely so that our lads and masses over at Magna can get a break. , so I wouldn't mind betting Andrew might take over so Rachel and Frankie can go on holiday or something like that. And we also want to try, , a new model because, , what happens if we do run out of stuff to excavate? , we need to know that there's something else we can offer people during the summer holidays that, that nowhere else can, uh, offer.

And of course, the greatest thing about it is we're hoping to offer them a chance to come and see the Ermine Street Guard. , now the Ermine Street Guard are a lovely reenactment group, , who have worked with the Vindolanda Trust for 50 years now. Absolutely amazing. , considering they, , celebrated their 50th anniversary of actually forming the actual Ermine Street Guard, , maybe a year or two ago.

It just goes to show they've been working with us right from the very, very start.

And of course, very importantly, which I actually love, and I'm determined to go there on the Sunday if that's the case, , they're bringing the Onaga back. Now an onager is like a great big massive great catapult, so they have a couple of blisters that fire the actual arrows, very dramatically. , but when they bring the onager, they crank it right off and they fire melons across our sight.

, so needless to say the wildlife eat well that nighT.

So, equal opportunity in slavers. , but when you were, , Actually in the, the Roman Empire, , their gods were your gods because being polytheistic, , , we have a god for everything. So, , for example, we have a beautiful, beautiful temple that was found at Vindolanda, , dedicated to the god Jupiter Dolacanus.

Now Dolacanus is an actual, , Persian god, uh, sort of brought over by some of the auxiliary soldiers, , but they share some similarities to Jupiter. who's kind of like their version of Deuce. , and essentially, , they decided to amalgamate him, become Jupiter Dolichanus, and he now sits pretty in our, in our sight as the first ever, uh, temple to be found inside a Roman fort.

So, go team Vindolanda, Vindolanda first there. , , now people around the world are addressing their forts and deciding maybe that could have been a temple, or that could have been a temple. And, of course, he's the guy that I blow kiss to every time I start my guided tour, just to make sure it doesn't rain on me, because he's a weather Heh heh heh heh.

building as you're coming into the fort, the right hand side of

or ex removal settlement, the village. And it's quite posh, and it's got a hypercourse system, and it looks really cool.

quite lavish. And if you look at the old guidebooks, it says Mansio, which is a kind of hotel. So they're thinking, keep it posh. , it's basically where you would stay for the night and, and, and, , the higher uppers might stay on, on route to where they're going. , however, fast forward to us digging up our round houses, , about five years ago or more.

And, , it, we found out it falls right during the, , Severan.

, the people like the Miamitai tribe who would ransom Romans back for, for coin and stuff, , all sorts of stuff was happening up there. And because of that, the local tribes, people who were kind of Roman sympathizers might be displaced, , big schisms in the family, , brother against brother, , big splits in the family.

And what would happen is basically there'd be a few that would sort of join forces with the tribes up, but the people that were. sort of on the roman side so to speak because they've given us bath houses and shops and things they would need a place to stay so the general theory is they were invited down to Vindolanda where the fort was actually knocked to the ground and a fortlet was put up and these round houses were built where essentially the There's the escaping refugees will be given protection, , unfortunately, , it came with a big price because essentially you've got a tiny little piece of land, a bit of food, , it'd all be squashed together, but you'd have to do all the work.

, and maybe they used it afterwards for Mancio, you never know. I mean, again, we haven't actually sort of found any evidence of that, but. You know, it, it harkens back to an earlier time, so the building wasn't that sort of dedicated for that third century fort, it was maybe a building that was put up earlier in, in the 200s and, and they just decided they were going to repurpose it maybe.

It's pretty amazing, really.

So, you can imagine the locals seeing these big grey things with giant great tusks coming off the ship and thinking, Wow! Oh my God, what is this? , so it was really Claudius that kind of pushed up and onto the, up towards the frontier. So he sort of started the groundwork, , and , but it was, it was Hadrian that really decided that Hadrian's wall was the way to go, on account of the fact that he needed to shore up his borders.

, but we do have a building that we found, , from about the time that the wall was built. It's a lovely wooden structure that's under the Vicus. And, , It looks like it's a, a, a lovely house that would be fit for, for nobility. So we'd kind of like to think that maybe if Hadrian did visit Hadrian's Wall, when it was being built, , that maybe he stayed at Vindolanda because of course, right next to Steel Rig, which was the highest pass, , one of the biggest forts, you know, maybe he worked his way along from Corbridge, which was pretty affluent at the time as well.

, we'd like to think that he did stay and, , we, we actually, we've, we've named it Hadrian's house. , so that it's, so that basically, , when people, people visit, it might sort of wet their imagination, , , from what I understand, , we haven't got loads of evidence of all different emperors visiting, but bear in mind that at one point, Vindolanda was the place to be, , I mean, if you were a commanding officer at Vindolanda, , you had your own commanding officer.

, hot rooms and, , your three story gaff and, , it was, it was very, very posh, , right out there on the frontier. So, so I'd like to think that maybe it wasn't just Hadrian that visited and, ,

We'd like to think that Septimius sent us some heavy, , visited, , when he was up there kicking the snot out of those tribes up on the wall. , but until we find that writing tablet that says, , , Yo, Septimius here, you know, love my stay at Vindolanda, we'll write a five star review on, uh,, TripAdvisor, , I don't think we're going to ever know, really.

And we actually looked it up and one of the names for a Roman soldier was a mile. , we, we actually found a, a lovely book in our bookshop. It turns out, , resources are everywhere. And, , from what we, what we understand, , a Roman mile was a certain amount of paces that an average soldier would do.

So, this is why it was shorter in our miles than it was, , , , shorter in their miles than our miles, which is why it was 74 to us, 80 to theirs. , there was, there's rumours around that it was something like, Queen Elizabeth the first, decided to set up the new miles or something like that.

We had a huge great debate about it, it was absolutely fantastic. So it just goes to show, working in somewhere like the Roman Army Museum of Vindolanda, sometimes you learn new things every day.

And the, , the dual balance is a lovely little measuring device that they would use with little weights and a pan, , for maybe sort of little, little items like spices or. medicines or something like that and, , and because we found the dual balance right slap bang in the middle of a milecastle, that lovely theory about border control and taxation is really starting to pan out.

And of course, from what we could tell, there was no mortar, , with the walls. It was how they were stacked. Can you share a little bit about Hadrian's Wall and the engineering of it?

, basically, the Romans, , used to use what we refer to as opus signinum, which is a mixture of lime and crushed tiles. , if you were somewhere , Pompeii or somewhere like that, they would probably also mix some volcanic ash into that as well. So it's lovely and malleable. So it worked with the stones rather than against it, and of course it was very, very waterproof as well.

, and essentially the, the, the mortar would be mixed up and, , by our reconsolidators when we, when we put our stones back together. And, , we would actually put it together in exactly the same way that the Romans did it, mainly because their mortar is better than our mortar was.

More malleable. It kind of worked with the stones. , back in, I think it was the Victorian age, there was a big push to put up some of Hadrian's Wall and they were so excited about this modern concrete and how, Durable it was and, , it's going to last for years and years and years and years and years.

And they put up a big stretch of Hadrian's Wall which fell down in, , a couple of months because it was, , it was fighting the stones rather than actually working with the stones. , and, and the wind was blowing on it and things like that. So they went back to the drawing board and they put together this, this, , Roman mortar

and, , and started again, basically. And it's, uh, and a lot, a lot of the sections have actually stayed up quite well. , we still have to keep going back to it. So we do have reconsolidators and stonemasons that will, from time to time, , sort of do a patch up job on one of our walls that's looking a bit rickety.

So, for example, that lovely bathhouse that I love so much, the, uh, Batavian one. , my lovely friend, , Dan, actually, , , reconsolidated that a couple of years back. So, it, it's, , it's, it's a work in progress. But yes, from, from what we understand, they, they had mortar, and they were very good at making it.

, , they reckon that they would chop the stones, and then haul them either down the hill, in our particular case, up from, , from Berkshire Bank and Barkham Hill. , but they would also, , hoist them up as well. So if you look down at Steel Rig, you'll see probably the quarry where they would have cut the actual stone and then used a hoist

, back in the day, they reckon they would have had the legionaries right at the bottom of the cliff , cutting out the stone and hoisting it up to their friends to put it on the wall. So, so yeah, it was pretty ingenious and bear in mind it only took six years to make. These guys knew their stuff.

Hadrian was a very interesting character. , from what we, what we understand, he, , he tolerated his wife and she kind of tolerated him, but the real lover of his life was a guy called Antinous, , who unfortunately died, , in a, in a sort of freak drowning accident, , over in somewhere Africa or somewhere, , and Hadrian was so absolutely gutted at the death of the, the love of his life, basically, , that essentially he almost erected a few shrines to this guy, which is understandable really, because if you look at any of the statues of Antinous, he was gorgeous, really lovely young and, , and essentially all the, uh, all the higher uppers were , oh I can't believe he's making such a fuss about this, , this, , this, this lowly pleb, this, , this slave, whatever.

But he loved him and of course the nicest thing about it is, , after Hadrian had gone to Elysium, apparently there were still sects out there that were actually, , still paying homage to the lovely young Antonis. Uh, and of course, because, of course, for various obvious reasons, he never actually had an heir to the throne, he had to nominate somebody instead.

, so he nominated a relative of his called Antonius Pius. And Antonius Pius fancied himself a bit of an awesome emperor, who was better than Hadrian. , so essentially what happened is, , he decided he was going to expand the, the empire further up into Scotland. And he ended up going to Glasgow,

A second wall.

So yeah, the Antonine Wall went up, and, , it was made out of just the, just the wood. , but apparently he was, he was known to have been so cocky about the whole thing that he decided he was going to take all the doors off Hadrian's wall. This is the Antonine Empire. I'm so much better than him for Hadrian, who came before me.

, fortunately for him, , the guys, I don't think so. , so he was chased back to Hadrian's Wall with his tail between his legs and the doors went promptly back

, , shout out to you Nero, , uh, or Caligula or, , Or basically somebody who kind of had spent the whole time watching their back, . But I mean, we did get some good emperors. I mean, the likes of Marcus Aurelius, , he actually was, was, , what, what they consider one of the great emperors, and he was quite a philosopher as well.

Bear in mind, all those people in the plunge pool were sploshing away and there's, you're only at the mercy of somebody who's going to empty it from time to time and reset the water. So, , a lot of time. that, , Marcus Aurelius and said, , if we had some kind of plug device where we can let the water out and give it a bit of a scrub before we put other people in, ,

yeah, basically, Marcus Aurelius, that's the guy that got killed by Joaquin Phoenix in, , in Gladiator,

Now we mentioned Septimius Severus, , earlier on in the episode, and , Julia Domner was his wife. So while he was warmongering and, and dishing out nice bathhouses to Carlisle, , essentially she was setting the trend, and , she was, she was, She was very sophisticated, and she wore her hair in a certain way.

And a bit like when, during the Elizabethan times, everyone wanted red hair, because, , Queen Bess had red hair. They all wanted the curls that Julia Domino was sporting. So it was nice to think that even back then, there was those lovely female role models that were sort of advocating for a bit of woman power in a male dominated world, basically.

They even minted some coins with her face on. It was kind of their version of Vogue. So that people could, uh, , people could say, Oh, I want my hair done like this when they went into the hairdressers and stuff. So yeah, well done Julia Domner.

And, , it's, it's, it's so nice to know that, , it wasn't just, Boys being boys, you had a whole lot of, , of women doing their stuff on Hadrian's Wall as well. Uh, we found a lovely writing tablet, , talking about, , it's a guy called Tagamas, who is a Vardoulian cavalry soldier. Uh, he's actually got, uh, if you saw the amphora with his name carved on it in the cavalry section in Vindolanda.

, he was from Spain. , but we have a lovely little slip of, of writing tablet that talks about his contubernalis. , actually, , owing three denarii to somebody. Now, who they owed it to, we don't know, because that bit was all shaved off. , but contubernalis was kind of the loose translation as, uh, messmate.

And the theory goes that maybe, , messmate was also a nice way of saying his lady. Instead of getting into, , women owing money and stuff, , his contubernales was three denarii, so you never know, this might have been the, , the woman behind the cavalry soldier as well, which is lovely.

And that is something we can't hide from history. We need to make sure people know about these women.

So, needless to say, he had a very bad day when he dropped that in the, in a drain. Ha,

Bear in mind, if you do find yourself walking along the high street of Vindolanda, or indeed finding your way to have a look at the milecastle in Magna, once it's dug up properly, that you're walking in the footsteps of people 2, 000 years ago that had no idea that, Their rubbish was going to make such an impact on, on the world and , their little thoughts and feelings and shopping lists and birthday invites and New Year's greetings and socks and underpants, you know, it's just, it's just absolutely wonderful.

And, and of course, there's that beautiful. set of stones popped up in the, in the coin room, , that you were talking about, the coin room, , where all these soldiers have slid their hands across it hundreds and thousands of times to get their pay and have eroded all these little delves in it. So, so if you ever find yourself at, at Vindolanda's coin room, just slide your hand across and I guarantee it will give you the bestest of goosebumps ever.

, obviously she'd been sending a lot of invites out because, , from what we understand amongst the, , high ranking officers on Hadrian's Wall, , there was a few mighty fine shindigs. , we get shopping lists with, with provisions and things like that. But in this particular case, she got a scribe to do most of the hard work because obviously she didn't want to write everything by hand.

, if she was sending out lots of invites, but there's a tiny little dedication on the bottom right hand side of that beautiful birthday invite, , that says something along the lines of, and bear in mind I'm paraphrasing here, it was a lot more flowery back in the day, , but basically something along the lines of, , come to my party dear, a sister, wouldn't be the same without you, love to the hubby and kids, and, , and it's,

from what we understand, it's the only surviving version of Roman female handwriting so far found in the whole of, of, of the world so far. And there it was found at Vindolanda on a bonfire site. , it's just absolutely amazing when you think about it.

Yeah, it's just a fun, entertainment is a fun world, and of course, learning history, that is a different world, and also brilliant and fun and amazing.

and , I always end the show with last inspiring words for the listeners.

And ever since I've really started taking up on the manifesting and the witchy stuff again, , it's just, it's just brightened. My life. And I want to spread the love, basically. , , I mean, the whole point is every time someone comes into, , into museum, uh, via, , if I'm, when I was at Vindolanda, or now that I'm at the Roman Army Museum, essentially, I want to make sure that when they come through their door, they're greeted like they're a long lost friend.

So. , don't dismiss people outright. You want to, you want to make friends with the widest amount of people you possibly can do, because at the end of the day, that's how, that's how this world's going to survive.

Try and bring everyone along with you in the journey. Because, , , laughter, fun, sunshine is to be shared.

And if you make that one person smile every day, then your world is, is infinitely better.

Well, thank you and thank you so much for your positive imprints. Well, Helen Charlie Nellist, it has been awesome having you here on Your Positive Imprint as you continue exploring those old worlds, but still seeking out, of course, the new life and new civilizations. And how do you end it? boldly,

Thank you so much for exploring those civilizations that are out there and bringing them to life for each and every one of us.

Learn more about Vindolanda, Vindolanda. com. V I N D O L A N D A, and also RomanArmyMuseum. com. Upcoming thrilling episodes just ahead.

Discover the steps companies that you might purchase from are taking to create positive imprints by reducing the recycled materials that they use from going into the landfills. It's a very interesting process. And, meet Sandy, the great nephew of the individual who first photographed Scotland's Nessie, the Loch Ness Monster.

Head over to my website where you can access all 214 episodes and amazing positive imprints your positive imprint.com. Thank you so much for listening and supporting this podcast, your positive imprint. What's your pi your.