07-15-2010, 02:49 PM
Duncan
I don't know if you are fully aware of all the work that Raymond Selkirk was into, but his most interesting subject was the logistics of supply in the Roman world hence his revelations with regard to Roman river transport.
However he began to follow up on much of the work and indeed comments made by many 18th / 19th century antiquarians, then one day he was messing around with some old maps figures and statements that had been made about some local Romano British settlements.
Then being a Navigator he made some of his own measurements and discovered that many of these sites began to come together in a line over the country, in fact one particular fort along his line had already been written about by Camden and Horsley. It is not one of the mile fortlets but a larger fort thrown into this line in the same manner as the Forts later put in on Hadrians' Wall, then it worked out that this line he determined goes right on thro' Hexham Abbey under which was the home of the Ala Petriana.
Then other forts and fortlets begin to show themselves as we go west on this heading of 255 degrees, in fact the heading one finds on leaving Newcastle Airport with just one of these fortlets a quarter of a mile from the Airport western approach.
Indeed if we consider what Hadrian did by rotating this line he moved his line north of the Irthing river and gave the western half of his wall a river supply system, with two sets of bargemen at either end I forget the one at Bowness however the Baccarii Tigrinensis were in the east.
I don't know if you are fully aware of all the work that Raymond Selkirk was into, but his most interesting subject was the logistics of supply in the Roman world hence his revelations with regard to Roman river transport.
However he began to follow up on much of the work and indeed comments made by many 18th / 19th century antiquarians, then one day he was messing around with some old maps figures and statements that had been made about some local Romano British settlements.
Then being a Navigator he made some of his own measurements and discovered that many of these sites began to come together in a line over the country, in fact one particular fort along his line had already been written about by Camden and Horsley. It is not one of the mile fortlets but a larger fort thrown into this line in the same manner as the Forts later put in on Hadrians' Wall, then it worked out that this line he determined goes right on thro' Hexham Abbey under which was the home of the Ala Petriana.
Then other forts and fortlets begin to show themselves as we go west on this heading of 255 degrees, in fact the heading one finds on leaving Newcastle Airport with just one of these fortlets a quarter of a mile from the Airport western approach.
Indeed if we consider what Hadrian did by rotating this line he moved his line north of the Irthing river and gave the western half of his wall a river supply system, with two sets of bargemen at either end I forget the one at Bowness however the Baccarii Tigrinensis were in the east.
Brian Stobbs
