A Canuck's Eye View A Slightly Different View of the World Walls of Wall

When I first saw this week’s challenge, I started thinking of walls I’ve seen all over the world – Saqsaywaman, Kathmandu, Macchu Pichu, the Grand Canyon – amazing walls. Then Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” began cycling through my brain and finally collided with Shirley Valentine. “Isn’t that right, Wall?” And that’s when this week’s post hit me.

Wall – a small town near Lichfield in Staffordshire. There has been human habitation there since at least Neolithic times, but everyone goes there these days because of the Romans. Found on Watling Street, the old Roman road, Wall began its life as an armed encampment and then a fort in the middle of the first century of the Common Era. Improvements were made over the decades – a bath house and gymnasium first, then a mansio for visiting dignitaries. Finallly, a wall was built around the whole, parts of which still exist – it is to this that the village name of Wall is attributed.

Today, the bath house, gymnasium and mansio form an outdoor museum exhibit that I enjoyed exploring. However, the walk in behind the church is also worth taking. And so, I present to you, the walls of Wall.

We’ll start on the site of the museum:

Two thousand years after the bath house was built late in the first century, all that remains are the foundations.

Looking over the bath house to the gymnasium, to the other side of the mansio, to modern Wall.

From the mansio entrance to the other side of Wall.

Now into the back lanes:

What is possibly an 18th century wall protects the inhabitants from outsiders.

Forget-Me-Nots grow in profusion at the base of the garden wall – walls also provide heat as well as being lovely backdrops.

Walls aren’t only about history, sometimes they’re for protection against ginormous dogs.

Over the graveyard wall and the church wall; over the Roman Walls and the 18th century Walls; over the fields beyond the Wall.

So that’s Wall – in a nutshell, anyway. One of the wonders of being here for me is being able to touch and walk in places like this. I love history; I love the connection with people who lived before me. I have seen many walls over the years, but none that speak to me the way these and others like them do. They have continued, as any well built wall will, since they stopped being used for the purpose for which they were built so long ago. I suppose when it comes down to it, “all in all we’re just another brick in the wall” of history.

For more Walls go to The Daily Post’s weekly photo challenge: “Wall.”