Hardknott Pass - a Roman vanity fort?

Taking a shiny, brand-new rented car up the steepest road in England seemed like a good idea.

At least, until I started to do it. That was when I saw that the 1:3 gradient wasn’t the issue. The steepness is fine. The issue is everything else: the coiling switchbacks; the one-car width of the road; the naked verges that mean there is nothing between you and the rocky valley floor 500 feet below; and, worst of all, everyone else who is trying to come down the same narrow road at the same time as you, and is equally reluctant to have their car turn into a tumbling metal coffin – a fate narrowly missed by an American tourist on neighbouring Wrynose Pass a few months back.

To drive over Hardknott Pass, you need two things: a head for heights, and good clutch control. A sturdy handbrake also helps.

It doesn’t hurt to pray in advance for dry weather, either. If you do, I’d recommend making a sacrifice to Mars, because the main reason to put yourself through the trial of Hardknott Pass is to visit the Roman fort situated near its summit.

View from the fort, looking east to Hardknott Pass half a mile away

At the roof of Roman Britain

This fort, Mediobogdum, is easily one of the most impressively situated Roman forts in Britain. Actually, probably not many forts in the entire empire could compete with its dramatic setting. The peaks of the Lake District rise like thunder on every side, an ominous backdrop of scree and broken shoulders of volcanic rock. The monotony of grey stone and russet-brown grass is broken only by the shining patches of snow that hide in mountainside clefts and hollows until the end of spring.

Remains of the bath house (left) and the south corner of the fort (right)

If a Roman defined civilisation in terms of urban life and cultivation, then this landscape was as barbaric as it came. Rocky it may be, but every other step lands you in a bog, especially after the winter when the ground is saturated with meltwater. There is hardly a level patch of ground to build a single house, never mind an entire fort. Clearly, nothing much is going to grow up in this miserable soil, with the cold wind whipping over the pass.

But when did the Romans ever give up so easily? Despite its remoteness, despite the challenges, with typical bloody-mindedness they built a fort up here in the AD 120s. This was around the same time as the construction of Hadrian’s Wall, so there was a serious amount of engineering ‘can-do’ in the air. They built a road, drained the boggy ground, hauled rocks from the peaks, and threw up a fort that looked as tough as the mountains around it.

Outside the fort they even levelled an area larger than a football pitch by cutting into the side of the mountain – though quite why they did this is a mystery. It is generally interpreted as a parade ground, which makes me wonder if Mediobogdum was a specialised training fort, a place to drill recruits and toughen them up before sending them to guard the rugged northern frontiers of Britain.

The 'parade ground' above the fort

Abandoned

Even so, the fort was only occupied for a short period, probably no more than a generation. Then it was abandoned. This says a lot about the remoteness of the setting, guarding a mountain pass that could not have seen a great deal of traffic at the best of times. Impressive, sure, but not a practical use of military resources.

I’m guilty of a sleight of hand in The Lion and the Lamb, where I have the fort being reoccupied in the fourth century. This probably never happened. True, some fourth-century coins have been found at Mediobogdum, which makes me feel a bit better, but they might just as well be evidence of passing traders making use of the abandoned ruins.

Yet all you have to do is visit this place, a monument to Roman determination at the roof of Britain, look up at the looming mountains and down into the deep haven of Eskdale to the west, feel the sharp air gusting in from the coast, and imagine how it would have been for the soldiers trapped in this fort through the bitter grip of winter – and then you can forgive a little dramatic licence.

Eskdale, with the Irish Sea just about visible on the horizon