The Antonine Wall

The Antonine Wall was built by the Romans between the Firth of Clyde and Firth of Forth. Building started in 143AD and took around ten years to complete. But what was the wall like and why was it there?

For the Romans, high walls served more than one function.

The most important functions was defence – high walls make it easier to protect an area from attack.

By the time walls such as Hadrian’s Wall or the later Antonine Wall were built, there had been lots of serious rebellions and attacks by the British tribes. Walls were one solution.

As well as providing a physical barrier that attackers had to either over or through, high walls also meant that only small numbers of Roman soldiers were required to defend large areas,

Walls also had other uses. The Romans also used walls to control trade between areas. If merchants wanted to enter into a territory to trade they would first have to pay a tax.

The Antonine Wall was thirty-seven miles long and ran east to west from the Firth of Forth to the Firth of Clyde. Its name comes from the Roman Emperor who ordered it to be built – Antoninus Pius.

Although the Romans had made previously fought their way further north in Scotland, the Antonine Wall was the boundary of all the land they controlled.

The Romans began building the Antonine Wall in 142 AD. At the time it was finished, it marked the northern edge of the Roman Empire.

Beyond it, the rest of northern Scotland was under the control of the Caledonian tribes.

The wall was made from heaping up enormous piles of earth and turf and had deep ditches to make it easier to defend. Sixteen Roman forts were built along the length of the wall to help protect it.

It took around ten to twelve years to build the wall but, after only eight years of defending it, the Romans pulled back from the wall and retreated to northern England behind the safety of another wall they’d built twenty years earlier – Hadrian’s Wall.

It had been an aim of the Roman Emperor, Antoninus Pius, to defeat the Caledonian tribes and push Roman control deeper into norther Scotland. After Pius died in 161 AD this goal was largely abandoned by the new Emperor, Marcus Aurelius.

It seems likely that the Antonine Wall became to expensive to defend and so it was abandoned. At the time this happened Rome had lots of other problems.

The tribes in northern England and southern Scotland were rebelling against Roman rule and, elsewhere in Europe, Rome was fighting costly wars. The troops required to defend the Antonine Wall were needed elsewhere.

The Roman forces in Scotland retreated behind the larger, stone-built Hadrian’s Wall and, over time, the Antonine Wall became ruins.Despite this, parts of it can still be seen today in places such as Bearsden, north of Glasgow.