Scotland England and the Wall: Robin Hood Tree

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Robin Hood Tree

For those of you who have seen Robin Hood movie, much of it was shot around here, Northumberland pretending to be Nottinghamshire.

The locals are pretty scathing about it but don’t fail to point out the tree they tried to hang Kevin Costner from.

You come upon the tree after coming down from Steel Rigg, one of the many predominant geographical features of the country around here. There are two trails here, one over the top another around the middle. After the climbing over the top of all these hills to this point we chose to take the lower route for the last one. I am not sure my knees could have taken yet another steep climb.

1 comment:

JaneyApril 16, 2011 at 8:39 PM
The tree in your picture looks a whole lot healthier than the "real" Robin Hood oak tree.
It was being propped up (in various places) when I saw it - thirty years ago. Seems that I remember a really bad British wind-storm - a number of years ago as well - that spelled the end of the tree (along with thousands of others).
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Hadrian's Wall Background

Hadrian's Wall was built following a visit by Roman Emperor Hadrian in 122 AD. He was quite concerned about raiders from the north. The Roman's were experiencing military difficulties in Britain and he was eager to impose order. He also most likely saw the building of such an impressive wall as a symbol of Roman power in occupied Britain. It was constructed to keep Roman Britain safe from hostile attacks from the Picts. It took somewhere between four to six years to complete.

It was the northernmost boundary of the Roman Empire at that time. The wall stretches from Newcastle, Wallsend-on-Tyne in the east to Bowness on the Solway Firth in the west.

The wall was 73 miles or 117 kilometres long, about 8 to10 feet wide, and 15 feet high. In addition to the wall, the Romans built a system of small forts called milecastles which housed by 60 men every Roman mile along its entire length, with smaller towers every 1/3 mile. Sixteen larger forts holding from 500 to 1000 troops were built into the wall, with large gates on the north face. To the south of the wall the Romans dug a wide ditch called a vallum with six foot high earth banks.

The width and height of Hadrian's Wall was dependent on whatever construction materials which were available nearby. East of River Irthing the wall was made from squared stone and measured 3 metres (9.7 ft) wide and five to six metres (16–20 ft) high, while west of the river the wall was made from turf and measured 6 metres (20 ft) wide and 3.5 metres (11.5 ft) high. This does not include the wall's ditches, berms and forts. The central section measured eight Roman feet wide (7.8 ft or 2.4 m) on a 10-foot (3.0 m) base. Some parts of this section of the wall survive to a height of 7 or 8 feet