[1] Running from Wallsend on the River Tyne in the east to Bowness-on-Solway in the west of what is now northern England, it was a stone wall with large ditches in front and behind, stretching across the whole width of the island.

The modern A69 and B6318 roads follow the course of the wall from Newcastle upon Tyne to Carlisle, then along the northern coast of Cumbria (south shore of the Solway Firth).

[19] On Hadrian's accession to the imperial throne in 117, there was unrest and rebellion in Roman Britain and from the peoples of various conquered lands across the empire, including Egypt, Judea, Libya and Mauretania.

"[20] This proposal has been challenged by other scholars like Duncan Campbell who argues that, though the scale and design of the wall was novel for Roman military construction, "there was a long tradition of wall-building in the ancient (Mediterranean) world upon which he could have drawn for inspiration without the inconvenience of traversing whole continents in search of a prototype.

"[21] In recent years, despite the overwhelming evidence over its 400 year manned presence, some scholars have disagreed with the established narrative over how much of a threat the inhabitants of northern Britain presented to the Romans, and whether there was any economic advantage in defending and garrisoning a fixed line of defences like the wall, rather than conquering and annexing what has become Northumberland and the Scottish Lowlands and then defending the territory with a looser arrangement of forts.

[2] The Latin text Historia Augusta states: (Hadrianus) murumque per octoginta milia passuum primus duxit, qui barbaros Romanosque divideret.

The curtain wall was not mainly a continuously-embattled defensive line, rather it would deter casual crossing and be an observation point that could alert Romans of an incoming attack and slow down enemy forces so that additional troops could arrive for support.

[2]The wall was also a symbolic statement of Rome's imperial power, marking the border between the so called civilized world and the unconquered barbarian wilderness.

As British archaeologist Neil Faulkner explains, "the wall, like other great Roman frontier monuments was as much a propaganda statement as a functional facility".

[24] There is some evidence that Hadrian's Wall was originally covered in plaster and then whitewashed: its shining surface would have reflected the sunlight and been visible for miles around.

[19] Hadrian ended his predecessor Trajan's policy of expanding the empire and instead focused on defending the current borders, namely at the time Britain.

[26] Based on this evidence, Collingwood concludes that the wall was originally to be built between present-day Newcastle and Bowness-on-Solway, with a uniform width of 10 Roman feet, all in stone.

[30] It is thought that following construction and when fully manned, almost 10,000 soldiers were stationed on Hadrian's Wall, made up not of the legions who built it but by regiments of auxiliary infantry and cavalry drawn from the provinces.

[31] Breeze says that soldiers who were stationed in the forts around the wall had the primary duty of defence; at the same time, the troops in the milecastles and turrets had the responsibility of frontier control.

[32] By about 200 BC, long before the Romans arrived in Britannia, the zone on both sides of what would become the wall, from Lothian to the north and the River Wear to the south, had become dominated by rectilinear enclosures.

These were the nuclei of extensive farming settlements at a high level of the social hierarchy, a numerous and widespread nobility; the lower orders lived in groups of round houses that left much less archaeological trace.

The wall probably cut across a coherent cultural area, and it was planned and built at a time of serious warfare in Britain, which required major Roman reinforcements from outside Britannia.

[33] A tablet from Vindolanda describes a centurio regionarius who exercised direct military rule from Carlisle, some 30 years after Roman conquest of the region.

Mortaria stamped with the name ANAVS were produced at Faverdale, some 80 kilometres south of the wall, and most of those found have come from the fort of Coria.

Presumably Velvotigernus was from the upper echelons of British society (his father's name means 'Great master'); he chose to settle near Lanchester some 27km south of the wall.

[37] This suggests the rapid development of elements of Roman culture both by the local upper classes and by immigrants either attracted by commercial possibilities or officially encouraged to settle.

A large area of what is now southern Scotland as far as Lothian, and the Northumbrian coastal plain, lost its monumental building tradition of substantial timber roundhouses and earthwork enclosures.

Pollen evidence suggests that the landscape immediately north of the wall remained generally open, without forest regeneration until the end of Roman rule.

The site at Huckhoe is the only one in this area to produce evidence of post-Hadrianic domestic residence (Roman coarse pottery, probably containers of high-prestige imported food, as late as the 3rd and possibly 4th centuries), and it may similarly have been mainly concerned with livestock management and delivery.

One such traditional point may be indicated by the concentration of Roman-period metal objects near Great Whittington, about 2 kilometres north along a Roman road from the Portgate on the wall.

In the same passage, Bede describes Hadrian's Wall as follows: "It is eight feet in breadth, and twelve in height; and, as can be clearly seen to this day, ran straight from east to west."

Enough survived in the 7th century for spolia from Hadrian's Wall (illustrated at right) to find its way into the construction of St Paul's Church in Monkwearmouth-Jarrow Abbey, where Bede was a monk.

A map of Newecastle (sic), drawn in 1610 by William Matthew, describes it as "Severus' Wall", mistakenly giving it the name ascribed by Bede to the Vallum.

On 31 August and 2 September 2012, there was a second illumination of the wall as a digital art installation called "Connecting Light", which was part of the London 2012 Festival.

This copper alloy pan (trulla) from the 2nd century is inscribed with a series of four names of Roman forts along the western sector of the wall: MAIS [Bowness-on-Solway] COGGABATA [Drumburgh] VXELODVNVM [Stanwix] CAMBOGLANNA [Castlesteads].