Wall species – Walls and Flowers

Mexican Fleabane and Diglis Basin

Diglis Basin or to give it its full name Waterside and Marina is at the junction on the River Severn in Worcester and the Birmingham Worcester Canal. On the walls of the canal and marina were various plants but the one that I am featuring here is the Mexican Daisy.

There was a good mix of wildflowers including the common Pellitory of the Wall along with Valerian and Dock but there was also some Skullcap which is much less common and this was the only place I have seen it growing from a wall. There was also some Marsh Bedstraw. Photographing them was somewhat precarious as it often involved leaning over the wall with the drop down to the water in the lock some distance below!

Here growing mixed with another common wall plant called Pellitory of the Wall.

The connection from Worcester to Birmingham was conceived so that materials could be transported all the way from Gloucester or Bristol by barge into the industrial heart of England. Construction began in 1792, the canal was built to a double barge width as the traffic load was expected to be quite high. One of the beneficiaries was Cadbury chocolate based in Bournville just south of Birmingham. The milk was transported to the factory by barge and the cocoa by rail.

The dock and connection to the River Seven was completed in 1893. The canal is 29 miles long and rises from start to finish by 428 feet. This involves 58 locks of which 30 are located in one short stretch known as Tardebigge which is the longest ‘lock flight’ in Europe… not for the faint hearted.

The canal has had mixed usage over the years but the development of an Oil Depot by Shell in 1926 gave a boost to trade but that eventually closed in 1968. Since 1992 the canal has been maintained by the Canal Conservation area.

The river Severn with Worcester Cathedral just visible behind the trees.

Mexican Fleabane as its name suggest comes from Mexico and central America, it first made an appearance in Britain back in the 1890’s. It looks almost exactly like a daisy, except that it is more straggly and does not grow in your lawn. It is quite happy growing out of walls and is one of the most tolerant plants of dry conditions. Quite good if you live in Mexico. Back in 1970 when Mexico hosted the Football World Cup the newly commissioned Aztec stadium had its walls softened by planting this species between the concrete blocks used in its construction.

The slight differences between the look of this plant and daisy is that the flowers are very slightly large and the leaves are longer and narrower. It is a perennial and flowers between May to September. It is quite tolerant of coastal conditions but is also found inland. I t is not so common in Northern Scotland or Ireland.

Fairy Foxglove and Ilkley Old Bridge

There are two bridges over the river Wharfe in Ilkley and the ‘Old Bridge’ and the ‘New Bridge’ The old one dates back to the 1620’s but that original one got washed away in 1673 and the present ‘Old Bridge’ was constructed in 1675. So it is quite old and consists of two spans and is quite narrow as it was designed to carry pack horses and people not cars.

It did get used for vehicles once they had been invented but that was banned in 1948 so now it is just people and bicycles and I suppose a pack horse would still be allowed to pass across.

The Fairy Foxglove is growing on one of the buttresses that support the bridge along with several other species, including House Leeks. The foxglove was in flower in May when I visited. As the buttress is well below the road level it was difficult to get a close up of the plant, I am not much into abseiling.

This plant is not native it is described as naturalised, ie it was introduced into gardens and then got established in the countryside. Originally it is a mountain species coming from southern Europe and north Africa. It was first brought to the UK in 1793 and was first recorded growing in the wild in 1867. However there is a tale that it was brought to Britain by Roman soldiers who had to cross the Alps to get to us and picked up some seeds on their boots. Just a tale as most ‘Roman’ soldiers in Britain did not come from Italy. However the story gets a bit of a boost as Fairy Flax does grow on Hadrian’s Wall and in the village of Wall which is close to Hadrian’s Wall.

Its distribution is mostly Northern England and Southern Scotland but it does occur in the south and in Wales, I suppose if folks are growing it in their gardens then it can escape to any part of the UK, just that it seems to survive better in Northern climes, no doubt reflecting its mountainous origins. I saw lots of it growing on walls of buildings at the top of the hill going up to Stirling Castle in Scotland.

The plant is a perennial and low growing with fleshy and hairy leaves that form a roughly basal rosette. The flower are pink and composed of five bilobed petals that fuse together at the base. However the petals are not all the same size, the two that point upwards are smaller and the three pointing down are larger and if anything the central one of the three is slightly bigger still. This is known as zygomorphic.

Its scientific name is Erinus alpinus which reflects its origin, it also has several common names like Alpine Balsam

Fumitories (Fumaria sp.)

There are several species of Fumitory, there are about ten in Britain, the commonest is simply called Common Fumitory, however this is less likely to be found on walls, more likely on a field margin.

The ones that can be encountered on walls are called Ramping Fumitories and there are six different species of these, they tend to be more robust and have larger flowers than the Common Fumitory. So that accounts for sevenspecies. The other three are less robust than Common Fumitory and again are often arable weeds so not associated paricularly with walls. These are called Dense Flowered Fumitory, Fine-leaved Fumitory and Few Flowered Fumitory.

The Ramping Fumitories of which there are six, as I said, are called Common Ramping Fumitory,Tall Ramping Fumitory, Martin’s Ramping Fumitory, Purple Ramping Fumitory, White Ramping Fumitory and Western Ramping Fumitory. Two of these (Martin’s and Western are very rare and both are only found in Cornwall. So this narrows it down to just 4.

All Fumitories are very similar, they are all annuals and all spread out and have small purplish flowers. This makes the identification quite difficult. Their flowers are borne on a spike and are to a greater or lesser extent purple. The individual flowers are like little tubes which split at the opening into a two lipped arrangement. The photograph shows a Ramping Fumitory, how do we know? Because Common Fumitory has longer spikes with normally more than20 flowers in a spike, this has about 14 per spike.

The flowers of Common Ramping Fumitory tend to be purple all over allbeit a darker purple towards the tip. Tall Ramping Fumitory tends to grow taller but thats not much good for ID unless you have the two side by side to compare. The key diagnostic featue is that in Tall Ramping Fumitory the flowes are almost white at the base and become more purple towards the tip. Purple Ramping Fumitory as indivdual flowers which are more purple and also purple all over and finally White Ramping Fumitory as you would expect has flowers which are predominantly white, creamy white in fact with just a purple tip pointing out at the end of the flower tube. Simple! so I think the illustrated flower is Tall Ramping Fumitory.

F. muralis is the Common Ramping Fumitory and the most likey one to be found on walls it is native to temperate and Mediterranean regions of western Europe and western North Africa. It also grows in open bare patches and is considered a weed of pastures, roadsides, gardens, footpaths, coastal shrub lands and disturbed areas. The scientific name ‘muralis’ suggests it likes walls.

Tall Ramping Fumitory (Fumaria bastardii) is more likely found as a weed in fields and has a much smaller range, being western and coastal.

Incidentally the name Fumitory comes fom the grey green leaves and the spreading habit of the plant which vaguely looks like smoke close to the ground…. you need plenty of imagination but then thinking up different names for all the thousnds of flowers probly demands that so the etymology is thus Middle English fumeterre, from Anglo-French, from Medieval Latin fumus terrae, literally, smoke of the earth, from Latin fumus + terrae, genitive of terra earth. So now you know. Also as with many plants it had medicinal uses and one was to treat eyes and Pliny says that rubbing the juice into the eyes causes them to water like smoke had got into your eyes ! ? However I would think the juice of most plants when rubbed into your eyes wouls cause then to water.

This article is incomplete it needs to be linked to a famous or interesting wall that has Fumitory growing on it. Any suggestions?

Wall Cotoneaster; (Cotoneaster horizontalis)

This is a shrub, which has a peculiar ‘flat’ way of growing, which makes it particularly suitable to growing up against walls.

It is grown for its bright Red berries which form in late summer and are then a good source of food for the birds so that by October to November they usually have very few if any left. The flowers are small and pink, they are produced in late Spring.

This is not a native species it originates in China, it was introduced into cultivation around 1879 and is extremely popular in gardens. It was first recorded from the wild in 1940 and apppears to be increasing rapidly. It is distributed by birds, similar to many other berries, the fruit is eaten and the seed passes through unharmed and is deposited where ever, often on a wall. So when the seed germinates it often gets established near the tops of walls and then spreads and cascades down. Birds that may be attracted to it are Blackbirds, Thrushes, Fieldfares and Redwings but if you are lucky it could bring in a Waxwing. Many plant species which use birds to distribute their seeds in this way, actually benifit from the passage of the seed through the birds gut as the digestive processes start to break down the outter seed coat and so germination occurs more easilly, than it would otherwise do.

However it can also establish itself on natural habitats, such as Limestone cliffs, pavements and screes,where many rare native species also often grow. Here they damage native vegetation and can be difficult to eradicate. It is an offence now to plant Cotoneaster species in wild and there are efforts to remove it from rare natural sites such as Limestone pavements.

This article is incomplete it needs to be linked to a famous or interesting wall that has Cotoneaster growing on it. Any suggestions?

Wall Rue and Easton Grey, Wiltshire.

Wall Rue is a fern and is commonly found in walls as its name would suggest, and often in company with Maidenhair Spleenwort with the latter being the more dominant of the two. Not so on the old bridge over the River Avon in Easton Grey where there are just two plant species, Ivy-leaved Toadflax and Wall Rue.

Asplenium ruta-muraria is the scientific name. It is blue green in colour, the same as the herb Rue. It is a small fern and grows in a compact tussock , not a spreading frond. It does not smell like its name sake the herb Rue which has a pungent and disagreeable smell and is not much used in cooking any more. Back in the day it was sometimes used in small quantities mostly for medicinal purposes. In some countries, for example Ethiopia, it is still used in cooking.

Wall Rue prefers alkaline conditions so limestone walls or walls where a lime mortar has been used to hold the stones together are to its liking although according to the BSBI, Wall Rue prefers a pH of 7 whilst Maidenhair Spleenwort prefers a pH of 8.

Easton Grey, near Malmesbury, is a Cotswold village through which the River Avon passes. There are several River Avons in Britain, nine to be precise! Avon means river in the Celtic language and Afon is the word for river in Welsh so the River Avon is the River River! The River Avon passing through Easton Grey ends up passing through Bristol and into the Bristol Channel at Avonmouth and so is sometimes referred to as the Bristol Avon or Lower Avon, It rises at Acton Turville near Chipping Sodbury in Gloucestershire and is seventy five miles long in a circular route, passing through Malmesbury, Tetbury, Bath and Bristol. Despite being only a few miles from the source, the bridge at Easton Grey is the seventh crossing point downstream. There are three arms of the river. The one at Easton Grey is called the Sherston branch. The originating source is debatable. Some consider the Tetbury Avon which rises at Wor Well to the north east of Tetbury to be the main source but whatever the source the three tributaries join in Malmesbury.

The bridge at Easton Grey is comprised of five pointed-arched spans. On the northern side there are six projecting triangular cutwaters buttressing each of them. It was probably constructed in the sixteenth century, and is made from local Cotswold stone which is ideal for Wall Rue Fern. It is very picturesque and is often the subject of photographs. The local artist Jack Russell has painted it. He was also rather good at cricket, playing for England as wicket keeper!

Not only is the bridge picturesque but so too is the little hamlet surrounding it, not least the house on the opposite side of the road called Bridge House. A local historian recalled that this house might have a connection to Edwin Lutyens. It was possible that he combined the original row of cottages into one property and that Gertrude Jekyll with whom he often collaborated had some influence over the garden. However I can find no reference to this elsewhere. My historian contact wonders if he heard about this in a Wiltshire monthly magazine or possibly when he attended an antiques auction there in or around 2000. I have found reference in an article by British Listed Buildings to the building undergoing major refurbishment in 1923 with an arts and crafts style circular chimney breast being a feature in one of the rooms. That is the closest link to Lutyens that I have been able to find

It has a very charming so called ‘fisherman’s cottage’ in the garden overlooking the river.

Gertrude Jekyll did however design a garden in Hampshire at a village with a similar name called Upton Grey. This was around the Old Manor House which Charles Holme purchased, and then rented to tenants for the rest of his life. The property deteriorated and eventually Holme commissioned a local architect Ernest Newton to refurbish it, keeping many of the original timbers. Today’s Edwardian decoration encloses oak rooms, a 16th-century staircase and original roof timbers. Newton’s house was finished in 1907. Gertrude Jekyll created a four and a half acre garden around it.

Rosebay (Willowherb) and Escomb Church Co.Durham

Well I suspect most of you have heard of Rosebay Willowherb although recently its genus has been changed so now it is sometimes simply called Rosebay. However you may not know that much about Escomb Church.

We came upon it when travelling up to Newcastle to visit college friends, it is not far from Bishop Auckland and is the oldest Saxon Church in the UK. The exact date of origin is a little lost in time but possibly 675 AD ish. It may well have been built where there was a former Celtic worship site as the surrounding church yard is spherical and some of the crosses cut into the stonework are of a Celtic design.

The surrounding wall on which the Rosebay was growing once had an inner hedge and was said to look very attractive. It is possible that the wall follows the line of a Celtic stone circle that predated the church.

One of the features of the church are two sundials above the entrance, the higher up one is thought to be contemporary with the building of the church and as such the oldest sundial which has remained in its original position since it was installed just 1,350 years ago! The dial has three lines on it which may have been the times when prayers were said, it also has a snake like creature but with a fish tail surrounding it and above there is a carving which seems to be the subject of some discussion as to what it depicts. Most seem to think it is the head of an animal, possibly a bull or and antelope, others think it may be the bottom half of a seated person ( the top half having broken away sometime) and I think it is a representation of Darth Vader.

Other features that can be seen are that several stones were from earlier Roman buildings, particularly the nearby fort of Binchester. One stone has LEG VI written on it which is the 6th Legion, however it is set upside down showing that the stone masons who made the church had no regard for the Roman heritage.

The Rosebay Willowherb was a rather stunted specimen, it can grow much taller and have a more impressive flower spike, however it was growing out of the top of a wall and was in some degree of shade due to nearby trees.

Rosebay or Rosebay Willowherb? Well it was the later and its scientific name was Epilobium angustifolium and that placed it in the same genus as all the other Willowherbs but then it was renamed Chamerion angustifolium, and thus separated from the main group, at the same time some folks started to refer to it as simply Rosebay. However the BSBI ( Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland) still stick with the full Rosebay Willowherb so that is good enough for me. The reasons for the change relates to various morphological differences. The leaves are arranged in a spiral as opposed to opposite which is the case with Epilobium species. Also the arrangement of the stigma and stamens is different. Finally it does not have a Hypanthium which is a sort of cup beneath the flower where the calyx, petals and stamens all fuse together. Something which is not that noticeable but you see it quite well developed in Pomegranates’.

All quite complicated, alternatively we could call it Fireweed which is its other common name as it often grows where there has been a fire. In the era of Steam trains it was often found along railway lines, now it is still found in such situations but that is probably due more to its light wind blown seeds which are easily distributed along railway lines.

Black Spleenwort and Wall, Staffordshire

There are several places called Wall, one is near Newcastle and that is obviously associated with Hadrian’s Wall another is in Staffordshire, and this one is on the famous Watling street a lot of which is now the A5.

The site has several plants growing on the walls, but when I visited in July many had succumbed to the hot dry summer, not so the Black Spleenwort which presumably has quite extensive roots as it is a perennial and has therefore the time to get its roots well into the wall and down to any residual moisture.

This fern is quite variable and depending on where it is growing it can look quite different. It is often to be found growing from walls, particularly in the west of Britain, in open situations the fronds are quite compact and the individual leaflets are rounded and the colour is light green. In woodlands it is more rangey and the individual leaflets are pointed and jaggy edged also they are usually dark green. One characteristic which does help to identify it wherever it is growing is that the central stalk down each frond has two groves running along it.

I had not heard of this place until I mentioned to my son that I was trying to put together something about Walls and Flowers and he said there is a village just along from where his brewery Trinity Brew Company is located on the outskirts of Litchfield. He said it was named Wall because there is a bit of Roman Wall there. Well not just ‘a bit’ but quite a lot.

Wall is however its new name, originally it was called Letocetum by the Romans who developed it as a fort on Watling Street, in fact there was probably habitation there before the Romans came as it is a junction where two ancient pathways cross Watling Street and Ryknild Street now known as Iknield Way . Also it was on a boundary between two Celtic tribes the Cornovii to the West and the Corieltauvi to the East. The original Iron age name was Lētocaiton meaning Grey Wood ( caiton has become modern day Welsh Coed ie wood).

Possibly the Letocetum referred more to the area rather than the specific location of a village as subsequent to the fall of the Roman empire the village disappeared and was replaced by another site nearby which became Litchfield a name also derived from Letocetum.

What you see now is the remains of two buildings, a guest house and a bath house. As is often the case with Roman settlements there were several reconstructions and alterations over the course of the 367 years they were here. Originally they just built marching camps as they proceeded north west along the ancient route of Watling Street, later they improved the route putting in a stone base so that communication could rapidly pass through and the the first guest house was built around 80AD but this was wooden, the first Bath house followed in 100AD but what you see now represents much later constructions made with stone and dating to the second and third centuries AD. However at its height it would have been quite a populous bustling community probably producing leather goods, glassware, pottery and metalware.

Other species growing at Wall were Mouse-eared Chickweed, Maidenhair Spleenwort, and Selfheal, but the Black Spleenwort was perhaps the commonest certainly the most impressive.

Harebell and Milecastle 37, Hadrian’s Wall

During a recent visit ‘up north’ as a southerner would say, we visited several places along the Hadrian’s Wall and I encountered Harebell numerous times. It was of course growing across the region in the low grassy moorland, but it was also growing directly out of or on top of the wall.

This beautiful and delicate looking little species is a rhizomatous perennial herb. It is however far from delicate in its requirements, being quite tolerant of dry, open, and infertile habitats. It is also not too fussy about soil pH being found in both mildly acidic and alkaline soils also it can tolerate some heavy metal presence. All in all it is well suited to life on walls but is also encountered in grassland, fixed dunes, rock ledges, roadsides and railway banks. It flowers from mid summer onwards.

Its scientific name is Campanula rotundifolia and it has several common names as you might expect, one is Scottish Bluebell but in Scotland they often call it simply Bluebell. It is not related to what the English think of as a Bluebell the one that grows in woodlands. It is the flower emblem of Sweden and the county flower of Yorkshire.

One of the places we saw it on Hadrian’s wall was mile fort number 37. it is the next fort along from Housesteads. Not surprisingly these milecastles (small forts) were built at one mile intervals all the way across the length of the wall.

This artists impression of how Milecastle 37 would have looked is by courtesy of HUKBMBEAR Thank you.

When it was up and running it would have had housing for 20 to 30 soldiers and they would have remained on site also each garrison would have manned the neighboring turrets. The milecastle’s garrison was a border post as well as being defensive in time of rebellion. It would have allowed the passage of people, goods and livestock across the frontier, and it is likely that the milecastle acted as a customs post to levy taxation on that traffic. Could Scottish independence could see the reintroduction of modern day equivalents?

Between each milecastle there would have been two turret structures these were located approximately one-third and two-thirds of the way between the milecastles; all very neat and precise just like the Roman roads.

The two turrets linked to milecastle 37 are named 37a and 37b. 37a is at Rapishaw Gap and was probably demolished before the Romans abandoned the wall and the only evidence for it now is some earthworks which can only be appreciated from aerial photographs.

Turret 37 b at Hotbank Grag is still visible but it is just a stone studded earthen platform so not that impressive now.

There were 80 milecastles and 158 turrets.

Hart’s-tongue Fern and Hadrian’s Wall

I finally got to visit Hadrian’s Wall about 50 years after I purchased the Ordnance Survey map of the area, back then it cost me 55p and in the bottom corner it has Crown Copyright, 1964. I suspect that I purchased it around 1973, at that time I was quite into ancient history. Apart from reading quite a lot of history books I remember visiting Stonehenge, back then it was free and you could walk right up to it and touch the stones, not so now.

We spent two days at various sites along the wall, working our way from East to West. The scenery is quite magnificent and there are lots of places where you can see the wall stretched out across the countryside and I suspect a Roman legionnaire would still recognise the scene if he could be magicked back into exitance today. The region near Walton Ridge was quite evocative and one of the plants growing there was the Harebell which is the subject of another chapter.

We came across the Hart’s-tongue fern at Vinolanda, and it was the only place where I saw it and even there I only spotted a couple of specimens. Vinolanda is a Roman auxiliary or supply fort about half way along the course of the wall. When the wall was built it had look out turrets every mile, then every so often there were large garrison forts set just back back from the wall, there were also forward forts these were located a little distance Infront of the wall and then supply forts located some distance behind the wall.. At its height there would have been about 10,000 soldiers distributed along the 73 mile wall and add to that there would have been large numbers of civilians, traders and entertainers and all the support folk that a large body of men would have attracted! If you take my meaning.

During the course of the Roman occupation the construction of the forts changed and older buildings were abandoned and new ones constructed. An example is that at Vindolanda there are two bath houses an earlier one constructed around 103 to 105 AD and a later one dating to the 3rd or 4th century AD. This bath house is located outside the main fort as were numerous other buildings housing the extensive community associated with the military camp. The bath would have been used by both soldiers and civilians but probably at different times. The reason it was outside the main fort was because of the risk of fire. Bath houses were heated by furnaces and hot air was ducted underneath raised floors called a hypocaust, this floor is about 80cm above the ground, the space underneath is now providing a home for the fern, I doubt much would have survived there when hot air was being circulated. The floors themselves got quite hot and bathers would wear thick wooden clogs to prevent burning their feet.

Apart from all the stone remains there is a superb museum at Vinolanda with some amazing finds that aerologists have recovered from the site. The shoe and sandal collection is the first thing you see as you enter, the coins, jewellery and glass wear is stunning but perhaps the most amazing finds are small wooden tablets with writing on, lots of them, and they have been translated and they are what folks back then were saying to one another it is the emails of the time.

I cant resist giving you a flavour of what they cover this one, randomly selected, (there are hundreds of them) was translated as saying.

bruised beans, two modii, chickens, twenty, a hundred apples, if you can find nice ones, a hundred or two hundred eggs, if they are for sale there at a fair price. … 8 sextarii of fish-sauce … a modius of olives … (Back) To … slave (?) of Verecundus.”

A shopping list! and they cover a vast range of subjects anything that one person might write to someone else.

I could go on about the museum and all its contents for much longer but lets switch now to the Hart’s-tongue fern which here was sheltered and protected by growing in the wall of the old underfloor heating. Protected not only from the elements but possibly also from the herbicide sprays that are no doubt occasionally used to keep the walls reasonably weed free. Hart’s-tongue fern is one of the few or only British ferns which has an entire leaf, ie not divided into lots of smaller leaves and leaflets, the typical compound leaf that ferns and some higher plants like Cow Parsley have. The Adders tongue fern has a small rolled up leaf somewhat similar to the spathe on a Lords and Ladies plant so that is the only other British fern with an entire leaf. On the undersides are the distinctive spore producing areas (sori) which turn brown as the spores are produced. This species retains its leaves during the winter but then produces a new batch in the Spring and the old ones gradually die off over the summer.

The scientific name is Asplenium scolopendrium but it is also called Phyllitis scolopendrium. The BSBI (Botanical society of Britain and Ireland) call it Phyllitis so that’s the one I would go for. It is found all over the UK and Ireland and often grows from walls or rocky outcrops, its only restriction on distribution is that it does not like acidic conditions. The species name ‘scolopendriun’ derives from the arrangement of millipedes or centipedes feet as the pattern of the sori on the underside resembles these species.

Snapdragon; Hexham Abbey, Northumberland

Snapdragon or Antirrhinum is a garden plant which has long been established in the wild. It is not native being from the Mediterranean and SW Europe. It was first grown here in gardens during Elizabethan times. It has a striking flower which is usually in a rich pink colour although garden varieties can come in various shades, white, cream, yellow and all stations from pink through to purple. The flower is perhaps reminiscent of a dragon and it does snap shut with the upper and lower parts coming together quite strongly. The only pollinators that can force their way into the flower is the larger bumble bees. I remember as a small boy being fascinated by the bumble bees pushing their way into the flowers and then backing out covered in pollen, also along with many other children I would pull one of the flowers away from the flower head and then you could squeeze the sides and the mouth would open.

It is an annual or short-lived perennial herb and is widely naturalised on old walls, waysides, pavement cracks, waste ground and rubbish tips. Populations can be long-lived, and the species reproduces readily from seed. It is less common in the North and in Scotland so Hexham is towards its upper limit. It is usually found close to habitation. It is quite tolerant of dry conditions, it prefers a pH of 7 and is not that frost hardy, thus its preference for southern Britain.

Hexham Abbey was built between 674 and 678, and much of the stone came from the remains of Roman buildings in Corbridge which is three miles away. It was Queen Etheldreda who gave the land to Wilfrid Bishop of York in 673 or 4 and thus it is one of the earliest Christian sites in the UK. What you see today is not what was built back then, it was largely replaced in the 12th and 13th century between 1170 through to 1250. Subsequent additions have been made, but given that every phase of building has been done in the same light honey coloured stone, it helps give the whole building a unity of form.

What does remain of the original church is the crypt and there you can see many roman stones including one that has the names of three emperors engraved into it Septimus Severus ( 193 to 211AD ) and his sons Marcus Aurelius ( 198 to 217 AD) and Geta. The three ruled as a triumvirate after Severus appointed his sons as joint rulers in 198 but when Severus died in 211 then the two sons ruled together but not that harmoniously.

Today the Abbey is well worth a visit, located in the very centre of Hexham and it does have a pleasant court yard with surrounding gardens and an excellent tea room. I was visiting the area with Dr Colin Harwood and thanks have to go to him for the photographs. He obliged by taking the pictures as I had left my camera back at base. As you can see both pink and white varieties grow on the walls.