The ‘Military Road’, marching with the Roman Wall for many miles, is one of the iconic highways of the north of England. If you have never done it, Newcastle to Carlisle, put it on your bucket list, and include the time to continue along the southern coast of the Solway Firth. Magic.
The name supposedly comes from the intention of the government, after the 1715 Jacobite uprising, to make a good road to move troops quickly east-west, but it was not fully made even by ‘The 1745’, and after Culloden the need was perceived as having largely receded.
By 1751 the government had decided that it was a job for the locals, and passed a turnpike act “An Act for laying out, making, and keeping in Repair, a Road proper for the Passage of Troops and Carriages from the City of Carlisle, to the Town of Newcastle upon Tyne.” The peasants always pay, one way or another.
This photograph of the turnpike recently surfaced via a Facebook post (do not know whose, so cannot attribute), and Google Street View and local knowledge was engaged to try to identify the location. First thought was ‘just west of Brocolitia’ (Roman station) but the hills on the horizon suggest further west still, although cameras of that era tend to foreshorten distances.
If you want to know more about the Military Road then have a look at The construction of the military road from Newcastle to Carlisle 1751 – 1758, which is a 1971 master’s degree thesis by William Lawson.
Lengthsman 