SEGEDUNUM, Wallsend, is admirably selected as the site of a Roman station, and as the eastern terminus of the Wall. Without being so much[Sidenote: SEGEDUNUM.] elevated as to give it a painful exposure to the blasts of the north and of the east, it commands a view, in every direction, of the adjacent country. The ground, in front of it, slopes rapidly down to the river’s brink, and has a full exposure to the mid-day sun. The beauty of its situation is considerable now; what must it have been when aged oaks crowned the contiguous heights, and the Tyne rolled by in the brilliancy and exuberance of its youth!
Eastward of Wallsend, the river acquires a sufficient magnitude to make it a barrier quite formidable enough to prevent the ready passage of a foe, and to render the erection of a wall unnecessary. Frequently, however, would it be needful for the watchful eye of the Roman prefect at SEGEDUNUM to traverse the expanse which lay between him and the sea. This he could easily do. The station stands upon a bend of the river, formed by two of the longest ‘reaches’ which it makes in the whole of its course. The Long-reach extends downwards as far as the high end of South Shields, and the Bill-reach stretches nearly two miles up the water. In both directions, therefore, any operations conducted on the river would be easily discerned from the station.
Although it was not thought requisite to extend the Wall further along the northern bank of the Tyne than Wallsend, special precautions were taken to secure the mouth of the river from hostile occupation. A camp at Tynemouth, and another at North Shields, were garrisoned by troops from the head quarters at SEGEDUNUM; these frowned over the northern shore of the estuary. A subsidiary station at Tyne Lawe, near South Shields, and another at Jarrow, guarded its southern bank, whilst one at Wardley, opposite Wallsend, would effectually support, on that side of the river, the operations of the garrison in the principal encampment. All of these will be examined afterwards.
[Illustration: Altar to Jupiter-Coh. IV. Lingonum]
The evidence by which Wallsend is identified with the _Segedunum_ of the Notitia is not so direct as could be desired. First in the list of officers ‘along the line of the Wall,’ the Notitia places the Tribune of the fourth cohort of the Lergi at SEGEDUNUM. Now, no inscription has been found in Britain mentioning the Lergi, but inscriptions have been found which mention the second and fourth cohorts of the Lingones; on the other hand, the Lingones never occur in the Notitia, but the cohorts of the Lergi which are there recorded, are the second and the fourth. This being the case, and the difference in the form of the Latin words _Lergorum_ and _Lingonum_ being very slight, the probability is, as Mr. Thomas Hodgson, in an able paper in the Archæologia Æliana, conjectures, that some early transcriber of the Notitia has written the one in mistake for the other. Within the precincts of Tynemouth Castle, in the year 1783, an altar was found, which formed part of the foundation of an ancient church. It is now in the possession of the Society of Antiquaries of London. The adjoining wood-cut accurately delineates it. The inscription may be read as follows: