Unveiling Mysteries of Vindolanda and Hadrian’s Wall, ancient Roman Empire ruins in United Kingdom. Helen Charlie Nellist

Helen Hadrian's Wall

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Your positive imprint. What's your PI.

Their goal was to showcase the structures and artifacts found for public viewing, this endeavor not only serves to educate about history and the impressive architecture, but also provides insights into people's lives through their letters and their stories.

And the Discovered Tablet, so incredibly amazing. Today's storyteller, Helen Charlie Nellist, will enchant you with the marvels of Vindolanda, Hadrian's Wall, and the Roman Army Museum located in the United Kingdom. And, oh my gosh, these locations offer you a captivating journey of exploration if you find yourself in the area.

Well, I met Helen at Fort Vindolanda a few months back. She is custodian of records and supervisor at Vindolanda,

and she's also co manager at Roman Army Museum. She's deeply committed to the past.

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

But we, of course, want to know more about Helen and her positive imprints . Helen, welcome to the show.

So we have the luxury of sitting down and chatting a little bit before hitting that record button. And oh my gosh, you are a hoot, Helen.

area, Pendle Hill.

Oh my gosh, but Helen's so interesting! And I had to run out the door. But here we meet again, hello.

Andy Serkis. The guy who is so good at motion capture. He's fabulous.

Well, totally ruinous, because it came a cropper when Henry VIII decided he was going to do the Reformation and knock everything down. , basically, Gisborough Priory is now just, , a lovely big archway that's in all the, , all the Gisborough, uh,, literature. , it's the logo of Gisborough, and it's a little tunnel.

, but the wonderful thing about Gisborough Priory is it's got a lot of, , fun. folktales behind it. , firstly, there's apparently, allegedly, a black monk ghost that turns up in Gisborough grounds the first January full moon, and it's his job to keep an eye on all those treasures that allegedly, , the monks hid when, , the Reformation took part and were going to sack the whole of Gisborough.

, ,

was a guy who thinks he'd found the treasure horde, at least he found the entrance to the treasure horde. , because allegedly it was this great big passageway. And, uh, he decided, in typical sort of Greek fantasy way, to take a spool of yarn down with him, like Ariadne would say.

And he went down, and down, and down, and down, and down, right into the centre of the earth. And when he came through into a doorway, just as his, , his yarn was just about to run out, , he saw this great big beautiful cavern. And right in the middle of the cavern there was all this beautiful, crosses, and gold, and jewellery, and all the stuff that was from Gisborough Priory.

And sat right in the middle of it all, there was, , a black crow, watching his every movement. And apparently, , or so it was said, he went into the middle of the, , the horde, thinking, it's just a crow, I'll be absolutely fine. And legend tells that as soon as he touched , , some of the jewels and, and things, , greed set in, and, therefore the devil sensed it, and the crow turned into the devil.

and, , unfortunately lost the end of his yarn and got lost in the catacombs for all time. So this is the kind of things that I was growing up with, , all these stories about Gisborough Priory and I would picture the monks walking around. , so every time we had a time off, my mum would say to me, so where do you want to go?

And I'd be like, Oh, well, we haven't been to Reevo Abbey for a while, or we haven't been to Helmsley Castle. So I can picture the knights, jousting and everything and, and all the damsels. , and of course, , quite often I go to, to Whitby, , you know, get me Dracula on, , because of course, Whitby Abbey is absolutely gorgeous.

You've got that churchyard there right up on the top of the hill. You can watch the lights go down in Whitby and, , just get the feel for the place. , and get a lemon top, of course, every time you're in Whitby. It's very important, , for those people who don't, didn't grow up in the northeast of England and the seaside town, , a lemon top is a Mr.

Whippy. Uh, so that's that lovely spirally stuff that comes out of a machine, ice cream, vanilla. And, , it was basically a dollop of lemon sorbet. And if you were very lucky, they'd give you a flake. And that was basically, , invented in Positos, which is a little cafe in Retka. Or red car, as most people would say.

, and essentially it's peculiar to the North East of England, which is why when I come up here, , I miss them so much, that's the one thing that hasn't made it up to the Thumbelands yet, so, I should start a trend, really. Uh, but yeah, I basically, , grew up with all these wonderful, ruins. So when I looked in, , I looked in the newspaper one day when I was looking for a job and it said, would you like to work for Roman Vindolanda?

, essentially I thought, ooh, Romans to think about. , so yes, I essentially took the job, , back down in the, it was, originally I was in the museum and coffee shop, , but then I migrated up to the Westgate, , found that I was completely in love with, everything Vindolanda Trust because of the excavations and all that wonderful stuff we do.

And then back end of last year, I was lucky enough to get a lovely promotion. So me and my friend Jeanette are actually now running the Roman Army Museum, which is Vindolanda's sister site, which is about 10 minutes down the road, right next door to a lovely fort called Magna, that we just started excavating last year in July.

We've got another four years to go. And considering we've already found our first skeleton, it's all looking very good.

what a good guide is, being able to retell the stories with excitement and flair and charisma and a big smile. So.

, so when you're walking down the Roman high street and you're seeing the, the, the houses arch over the top of you and picking up the smells from the bath house, God help you. , Quite nice that the, the people that go on that journey with you can also appreciate it, which is nice because otherwise it just all stays in your head and it's never good.

, like yourself, you kind of want to see it as well. And, , we've already found out that, , from extensive climate change research, , drilling lots of holes in our sites, both, , both Vindolanda and Magna, uh, that climate change is actually coming a cropper on some of the wonderful items. , you'll see yourself.

And it's all very well preserving those stones, I mean, stones are eternal, more or less, provided you don't get enough water on it. , but all those intimate little things , , personal thoughts and feelings, writing tablets and, and shoes and combs and, and all those beautiful things that just tell a story about people on the Roman frontier, it's just disappearing.

And, , so this is why we're on a race against time. I mean, at Magna, we've managed to get four more years after this. past one, and we're trying to get as much of it out of the ground as we possibly can do, because this might be the only chance we can save these beautiful treasures, , that would have been considered rubbish 2, 000 years ago when they threw it away, , but for us it's just this magic that you're touching, touching people from 2, 000 years ago, it's like,

, what was the point of that, that the Romans had?

And, and essentially, we have that wonderful thing that, , when, when Somebody got, , a lowly pleb like ourselves, , would have, uh, very little money when it came to getting new shoes and of course resources were a lot more rarer. , you'd have to get a, get a goat if you wanted to, to get a new pair of shoes.

And, uh, where nowadays we would just say, Oh, there's a hole in this one. We'll throw them both out. , the general consensus is when you were an everyday person, you couldn't afford to do that. So what you do is you'd mend your shoe. , , we've found traces of lead, twine, all sorts of stuff. And then eventually what happens is the , the entire shoe practically falls off someone's feet because they can't mend it anymore.

And they'd hobble across to the, to the cobbler and they'd say, Hey, can you make one that looks like this? And the other one would go in the rubbish dump. And, uh, and of course the great thing about this is every time the Romans would leave, , a particular cohort, they wanted to make sure that nobody else was actually going to be, , taking over the site.

You can imagine it would be awkward if you were another cohort coming in and the locals had stolen the other fort that was stood up and was defending it. , so they would just raise everything to the ground. Everything would be knocked down. And of course there'd be lots of stuff they wanted to get rid of.

So, essentially, they would just throw it all in a great big dump, and just abandon site.

Essentially, that's what they did. They wanted to make sure that any enemy insurgent that was coming, , to come along, wouldn't be able to make it their home and defend it so that when the next cohort turned up it was just a case of, oh look, bit of a mess, , we'll add our rubbish to it, uh, we'll cover it up with a bit of turf and clay, make sure it looks nice and flat, and we'll start again.

And of course we're lucky enough to have lovely peaty soil and at least eight or nine turnovers, , on the actual fort itself. So each time they went, they knocked it down, it got covered over, we built again. And of course, lovely peaty soil means that, , as well, it's all that lovely anaerobic soil, which is oxygen free, which means no bacteria.

And so you dig down a couple of metres and that's when all the juicy stuff comes out, all the organic stuff. So, so things like, , Uh,

, we, we get all the wood. , Basically, we even found a wig that was made out of hair moss, and they used the same material to make a lovely plume that's now at the Roman Army Museum, which would have been a lovely rusty red colour originally, , but it's now gone black of course due to age and being in the ground all that time.

, but it also meant that we can now look at it and say, well, At the end of the day, you've got somebody there who's, , using the local resources. , , up until this point, people would think that it was only horse hair that they used to make these elaborate , and essentially, now we're knowing that they're using moss that's grown in the area because it's easier to get hold of

And

, on the, , looking after your feet. , basically the most wonderful thing is they've actually, they've actually spotted that in some particular cases the, the build up of the, hobnails, uh, are actually more prevalent on one side of the foot. So if someone favours one side to the other, maybe, , they've got a certain gait, , it would basically be, be, , the nails would go in there just to give that extra bit of cushioning.

, which is. How cool is that?

, but the Vindolanda Trust really started when, , a young chap called Eric Burley took a liking to, , the whole Hadrian's Wall idea. And, , he basically was, he was going to put a bid in for Carabra, which is Broccolicia, temple just down the road from, from where Vindolanda is. , but rumour has it that there was, , a couple of local labourers in a pub that was having a painting as he was, , Scoping the joint to see which one he liked to look of, , who said, well, we've been, we've been excavating, well, digging Vindolanda, , to put in drains and we keep finding these altar stones and all this amazing stuff.

Smart money's on Vindolanda. , and he took that to heart. So he, he basically, , put a bid in for Vindolanda and the rest is history basically. And of course, fortunately his sons, Robin and Anta Lee, , shared the same passion. , even when, uh, they had to move from Vindolanda, , , the Burley sons, Robin and Anthony, were still going back to doing some excavations.

And then, of course, when Robin met Pat, , and, , she shared the passion as well. And that was then passed on to the very lovely Andrew Burley, Dr. Andrew Burley, who's now our, , trust, , Not only the CEO, but also Director of Excavations is a busy lad, uh, and his sister Sonia, , and then of course that then got passed on.

We've got a fourth generation coming up. Having talked to some of the fourth generation, I don't know if they're quite so keen on taking over in the family footsteps because it is a daunting, daunting task. , but I think as long as there's people like minded , uh, the Burleys and like myself and, and all the people who just love the Trust because, , we're, we're making history

, it's, it's going to keep going for years and years to go and considering that the, uh, we've, we've got an estimated of hopefully 150 years more at the Vindolanda, , site, , to keep digging. We've just gone into the final quarter, , in April, the, , third century fort. , so we've got five years of that and then who knows where that's going to go.

And in the meantime, in the background, there's my lovely friends, Rachel and Frankie, , digging away at, . at Magna for the next four years, coming out with all sorts of treasures there as well. So, so as soon as, as long as there's going to be an interest, we're going to keep digging because we do it for the love, , I mean, yeah, I mean, obviously I'm, I'm employed.

By the trust, , they look after me very well for, for all sorts of things when it comes to paying my mortgage and stuff. But there's very rarely places on your day off where you would actually voluntarily say, Well, no, I'm going to go back and I'm going to go back to the scene of the crime, so to speak, and, and do a guided tour for free.

Because, , I just love the place. It's just, , it's, it's a feel, we're a family at Vindolanda. We've always been a family and, , that, that echoes right the way through from, from the High Ruffers, , even like the chairman, Gary, , of, of the Board of Trustees. He's in love with the place and, , our curator Barbara and our, our deputy archaeologist M. Valberti, basically everybody Everybody loves Vindolanda and it's, it's because it gets under your skin because you start thinking about the people, , who walked in those shoes.

I'm walking on the same pavement that these shoes walked on, but who was it? And then you start reading the writing tablets and they're talking about, , , I know I'm setting, I know I'm setting up this fort in 85 AD, 40 years before the wall, but where are my turnips and cabbages? And, , will you come to my birthday party?

And, oh, it's marvellous. It really is.

incredibly informative and , just walking around the fort and museum,

Helen provides information on the famous sycamore tree.

Everyone wanted to see where it had been and what was happening and things like that. And of course, the big carry away, so I mean, big smile on everyone's face here, is the fact that our sycamore is still alive. So, , we don't have to worry too much about the, the evil swines that decided they were going to cut it down because the sycamore, of course, nature gets the last laugh.

Uh, sycamores, of course, the, , the Celtic, religion believes that the tree of life was a sycamore and it's because sycamores are longevity and you cut them down they'll, they'll grow back stronger. A bit like Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy. So yeah, essentially, , we already know that she's already starting to sprout, so that's good.

, we've, , basically they've taken lots and lots and lots of little seedlings to see if they can grow some more sycamore, sycamores from her. , rumor has it, I think they've been taken over to Canada and across the Canadian's northeast. And there's a, there's a rumor going around as well that possibly they might use 3D technology to try and conjure up some kind of image of her.

Apparently there was a Middle Eastern archway that was bombed heavily, and they lost the Middle Eastern archway. And they put out this mass email around the world to say, look, if anyone had stood behind this archway or stood underneath it and pointed and, , taken photographs of it, would you send me your images?

Because essentially they can hopefully composite. sycamore and do a 3d rendering and of course most recently they're now telling us that the bulk of the sycamore tree that they had to take down is actually going to go on display in uh the sill which is just down the road from vindolanda

, for, for us, I mean, we not get to see her as strong and tall as, as we'd like to see her, because obviously we're not all immortal. Uh, but we might catch a more squid adolescent phase, possibly.

It was just more or less before you arrived just after it, didn't you? Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

So now with Vindolanda and then going over to Hadrian's Wall. So first, give us a little, , tour of Vindolanda. Number one, where it's located.

So basically, smart emperor that he was, he decided instead of conquering, conquering, conquering and conquering, it was about time that he just kind of said, right, we've got lots of things to protect, build those walls, which is why he put up the German liens as well. , and keep, keep our assets safe. , so that was, that was great.

But Vindolanda actually falls before the wall was built. And it was, , round about 83 AD when you had a chap called Agricola that was set up to basically kick all the local tribes into touch and set up the Roman frontier. , now we tend to refer to it as the Stangate frontier. , because the, the medieval guys called that East to West Road, Corbridge to Carlisle, , the Stangate or Stone Road.

We don't know what the Romans called it. , that falls in quite nicely though with our absolutely amazing Tungrians that set up our first fort. , they were an auxiliary cohort from Belgium, , under the command of a guy called Julius Vericundus, and it was their job to put some, put some nice sturdy forts up along the Stangate Road because they wanted to make sure there was a nice military presence and also the needy places for people to rest up because it's a long walk from Corbidge to Carlisle.

, so essentially they've come up over the rise and they've seen this Little tribe minding its own business, , sitting right slap bang on this lovely plateau right near the staying gate road. And, , because of that, they've thought, ah, good water of sources, good building materials. , we know for a fact that, , we have quarries up in the hill behind Vindolanda, , one of which both from what I understand, the largest carved male Roman member in the whole of Britain, uh, because boys were be boys.

And essentially, , they, they kicked the tribe off and they did the typical Roman thing. They kicked him off. , they moved in, they built the first fort out of wood, and they called the place Vindolanda, which means white lands or white plains. So whether it was a vegetation or just basically because it was Northumberland so it's blooming cold, , they got that lovely white land feel to it.

And of course then you had the eight successive forts on top of that, , going right the way through to the end of the occupation. And of course even when the occupation finished, , in about, uh,, 410 ish. , basically they still had people on the site because, , odds are some of the auxiliary soldiers stayed on.

We had, we had French guys by that point, , the Gauls, and, , they would have probably stayed on with their families, which they'd have raised up on the, the Roman frontier, because by that point they're not getting any wages, , they know that they're, they're busy down in Rome with the Visigoth, and all that stuff so he was going to come up and track them down.

, so they moved everybody into the fort for better protection and it plodded on like that quite nicely for 500 years until, obviously, eventually the Anglo Saxons started coming up and down causing trouble. , by that point our fort had become quite, , monastic. We've got some 5th century churches. , we've had bits built on apses into our commanding officer's residence that we found a lovely mobile altar on.

We've been digging up beautiful chalices with, , with, , Christian, , iconography on it. , so, of course, it was starting to get a bit worn, was the force, and they were starting to become easy pickings. So, essentially, , What happened was the locals just went, what, it's not worth it, pick up sticks, we'll move into the valley, and it can just do its thing.

And then of course that's when people started using it to build their farmhouses. And we go right the way back to John Clayton again. LAUGHS

Roughly about the same size as Hexham. , and then of course, eventually, you would, , it would start to dwindle, and it would come, , , come down for a couple of thousand, to kind of about the size of Holt Whistle, where I now live. So, imagine all those merchants, women, children, soldiers, civilians, , animals, all up and down that one concourse at Vindolanda.

And we're now thinking that, , there's a distinct possibility that Magna, which is the fort behind the Roman Army Museum, Well, when I work, , is actually, , bigger because it's on a, it's on a crossroads. So you've got four way traffic instead of just two way. Uh, and because of that, we thinking it would have been pretty vast.

Unfortunately, the local farmer at the time knew that it would be quite easy to sell off some of the alters to make up a bit of cash. , but at the same time he got sick to death of, , all the hoi polloi walking around his field causing chew with his sheep. , so, rumour has it he basically just

knocked the whole thing down. The whole of that beautiful bathhouse is now lost to the ages because one farmer decided, Nah, I've had enough of people walking round. So we're not expecting to find many structures at Magna. , we're more interested in the actual little items that's going to come out of the ground basically.

Well, that'll be interesting.

Yes, we've actually got the extension in full swing.

, tools, , and, and very, very few intact ones because, , every average soldier, , it was up to him to buy a new tool. If he broke it, so you want to keep that cash for the, for the pike and the, and the, and the, , the company, , up on, up on Hadrian's Wall and, and spend it less on the tools, so they've been really looking after their stuff, , which is why when we did actually find that cavalry sword, , which brilliantly just came up in time for a show that they were filming called Digging for Britain, which is , very, very popular over here.

, we found a full cavalry sword with bits of scabbard attached to it, wooden scabbard. , they must have left in a real hurry. , so, I wouldn't mind betting that was when the Batavians were told they had to clear out pretty sharpish. And it kind of ties in with our lovely bonfire site where we found all those lovely writing tablets.

Uh, as you go on to it, it's kind of tucked away and it's absolutely beautiful. It doesn't usually make the tours because the Gaulish one, , , from the third century is more handy for pointing out things like, , like plunge pools and things like that. And it's right on the tour course. , but if you find yourself at Vindolanda, hang to the right, past the, the replicas, and you'll see a beautiful system of hypercourse that was, was set up, , before, before the first one, uh, before the third century one.

And of course, it's the only place on the entire site that actually bore some actual Roman concrete. So those guys did a really good job. Can't tell I'm a bit of a Batavian fangirl, can you?

, which meant that basically it would have come all the way from the Black Sea, , in, , because that's where the boxwood grows, the box trees. Uh, and essentially it would have come all the way through, , sort of Salmatia and, and Germania, and worked its way up the country to, to get onto the commanding officer's, , table, hopefully, for his, for his turnips and, and cabbages, because when they actually tested the, the, the actual residue in it.

They reckon that black organic residue was probably pepper.

So yeah, have a look on our website because it's a lot of free stuff that you can play about with even before you come visit us.

And essentially you should find this thing that says Virtual Vindolanda.

, my pepper pot falls into the on the move section. And we were lucky to work with a lovely gentleman called Rhys from Teesside University who actually managed to scan all our lovely, All the lovely items in, , so that you can actually play about with them, the 3D rendering in real time, and see what they look like.

Even if you're, , sat over in the States, or in India, or Australia, , you can see our collection, but up close and personal, which is lovely.

Trace the journey of a boxwood pepper pot from the Black Sea to Vindolanda.

It went on a heck of a journey. Let's put it that way.

, not so much at Hadrian's Wall, I wouldn't think. The, the pepper Pepper maybe, , but for example we always say that you wouldn't, , you usually wouldn't wipe your bum with a sponge on a stick at Vindolanda, , we'd be more likely to use moss because importing sponge to, uh, the frontier would have been a bit more fun.

So use your moss on a stick, , reuse and recycle. And, uh, what was it, my friend Pat says you wouldn't find a sponge growing in the Tyne. Yes, because we've got climate change on the cards.

Have the Romans ever done for us? Well, they did a lot, actually, but then we forgot it all, which was difficult.

Yeah, pretty incredible. So question about the people. And so now the Roman soldiers, there were quite a number of them that had to, , stay around Hadrian's wall, which we'll get to here also in a moment. , Were they allowed, they weren't allowed to marry, were they?

Uh, and of course, bear in mind, I mean, the people that actually, there's the soldiers that were up on our wall, there weren't, , any of the, the large Roman, Italian, , , infrastructure. These, these guys were auxiliary soldiers that were kind of press gang from around the world and, and sent to where they needed to be.

And, , the general theory was, we'll post you as far away from your mum and dad as we possibly can do, because if you revolt, we're going to really want to make you. and dessert, you're going to have to really work for it. So, so, I mean, we had the Nervians and the Gauls from France. We had Vardoulians from Spain, , Rations from Germany.

We had those Batavian lads again. Uh, we also had, , from the Netherlands. , you know, we've got the Tungians from Belgium, of course, that put our first thought together. , and of course, bear in mind behind the Roman army museum, these are the guys I feel most sorry for. , we had the Hamian archers and they were, they were sort of, , pressed into service all the way from Syria.

So imagine coming from Syria and ended up at, and ending up at Hadrian's wall where it's blowing a hooli and, , and there's, there's nobody that speaks your language, but I mean, they were, they were a victim of their, their own success because apparently there were crack shots. , so that the giant.

, the giant military engine that was the Roman Empire thought, well, , if we're going to build a wall, we're going to need it manned by people who can pot shot at the enemies, they're climbing up the vallum. So, off went the Syrians, , and the Dalmatians over there as well, which is why we're eager to get into the ground to see, What they had to say about it all.

, I mean, if we find writing tablets and those sets of people, how cool is that? .

Storyteller and tour guide Helen Charlie Nellist continues with information on Vindolanda and Hadrian's Wall on the next episode of Your Positive Imprint.

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To learn more about vindolanda, go to vindolanda.com. That's V-I-N-D-O-L-A-N-D-A and the Roman Army Museum. Roman army museum.com.

And there are a couple of YouTube sites that you might want to check out. Vindolanda Roman Shoe Webinar, presented by Professor Elizabeth Green. As well as

The Vindolanda Combs, presented by Barbara Burley.

On the next episode, Helen continues sharing more of Vindolanda and Hadrian's Wall.

Thank you so much for listening and supporting this podcast.

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