The Wall was placed slightly north of the existing line of military installations between the River Tyne and the Solway Firth. The inscription on the Ilam pan, a 2nd-century souvenir of Hadrian’s Wall found in 2003, suggests that it was called the vallum Aelii, Aelius being Hadrian’s family name. Before work was completed, 14 forts were added, followed by an earthwork known as the Vallum to the south. The original plan was for a wall of stone or turf, with a guarded gate every mile and two observation towers in between, and fronted by a wide, deep ditch. The building of Hadrian’s Wall probably began that year, and took at least six years to complete. Hadrian came to Britain in AD 122 and, according to a biography written 200 years later, ‘put many things to right and was the first to build a wall 80 miles long from sea to sea to separate the barbarians from the Romans’. The forts here were linked by a road, now known as the Stanegate, between Corbridge and Carlisle. By about AD 100 the northernmost army units in Britain lay along the Tyne–Solway isthmus. Permanent conquest of Britain began in AD 43.
