Hadrian's Wall NMP

 As part of the National Mapping Programme, a survey of Hadrian's Wall is being undertaken by the English Heritage Aerial Survey team, based in York. Hadrian's Wall, a World Heritage Site (WHS), is the most well known surviving frontier of the Roman Empire and is the most important monument built by the Romans in Britain. A short history of the Wall and its main features can be found on subsequent pages.

The most recent management plan for Hadrian's Wall World Heritage Site highlighted 'the need for adequate and improved information and understanding of the history, development and present use of the WHS and its setting'. The NMP project will help to provide some of this information through the analysis of aerial photography and digital mapping of all visible archaeological features.

The project will particularly help to allow Hadrian's Wall to be understood in a landscape context. It is hoped that it will be possible to see the pattern of settlement before the Wall was built and to understand how the construction of the Wall influenced local patterns of land-use right through to the medieval period.

The English Heritage survey will cover the full length of the Wall from the Solway Plain in the west to Newcastle in the east. The project area is a broad band, up to 15km wide, with Hadrian's Wall running through the centre of it. The project team will examine over 27,500 air photographs, ranging in date from 1930 to 2004.

The area of the Solway Plain has already been completed and the team has now moved on to the 'central zone' of the Wall where some of the most famous sites are to be found, including the forts at Housesteads and Vindolanda and this milecastle in Cawfield Crags.

The Roman remains and wild landscape combine to form a spectacular attraction for visitors. There is more information available about visiting English Heritage sites along Hadrian's Wall or National Trust properties. More details about walking along the Hadrian's Wall National Trail and information on the National Park are also available as is information on Hadrian's Wall as a World Heritage Site.

The images used on this page are copyright English Heritage unless specified otherwise. For further details of any photographs or other images and for copies of these, or the plans and reports related to the project please contact the NMR English Heritage's public archive.

For further information on a project or any other aspect of the work of the Aerial Survey team please contact us at: AerialSurvey@english-heritage.org.uk.