Additional Resources

Post Visit PowerPoint presentation 

Looking for something to have in the classroom for after your visit to reinforce the children's learning while at Vindolanda and the Roman Army Museum? We have put together this PowerPoint presentation which you can adapt and add your over images into to help your class remember what they did while on site or in our museums. 

Walk the Wall: Walltown Crags

Walltown Crags is one of the most beautiful sections of Hadrian's Wall with 360 degree sweeping views of the Northumbrian Countryside. We have developed the Walk the Wall: Walltown Crags walk to continue your learning journey. The walk takes you to see the vallum before climbing up to the crags to see the Wall and walk alongside it to turret 45B. There are questions to be answered to keep the children engaged while walk. You return to the Roman Army Museum via the Walltown Quarry Country Park. The walk take about 1 to 1.5 hours depending on how much time you allow for the children to search for answers and enjoy the landscape. We would advise that the hill up to the Wall is steep and that it can be muddy. Also the walk goes on small country lanes and accesses open farmland.  

Walk the Wall: Walltown Crags

Missing Dead app

Our game ‘The Missing Dead’, played on the Vindolanda site, takes the player back in time from the discovery of a Roman skeleton in 2010 to c. 230CE to try to solve the mystery of what happened might have happened to the person. With Aquila the Eagle as the guide, the user learns about what life would have been like at Vindolanda in the 3rd century AD by exploring the diverse community that lived there.

Missing Dead

Fort Magna - why wet feet can be a good thing.

Extra activity for the Roman Army Museum as found in the Teacher's Mini Guides

Let us have a look at Fort Magna - the fort on the rock - mentioned in the film. Leaving the Roman Army Museum, turn left, walk a few metres along the road, and look left. The remains of Magna are unexcavated in the field adjacent to the Roman Army Museum, but you will be able to see the ditch of the fort from the wooden gate. (There is often livestock in the field, so please do not go through the gate.)

There are no stone walls to see: do you have any idea why that might be? (Magna is an unexcavated fort) To give you an idea of what it might have looked like, look at this drawing. (download reconstruction drawing)

• Think about what you saw in the museum. What could the archaeologists find here?

• In the museum we saw many artefacts, some of them made from wood and leather. Think about what happens to them after thousands of years. To help, think first about what happens to an apple after a while? (it rots away; the same would happen to wood and leather, but after a longer time).

• Objects don’t rot away when they are covered by wet earth. The soil in this field is very marshy and wet, so the archaeologist might be able to find artefacts when they are able to dig.

• Why do you think wet feet are a good thing when walking here?

• The unexcavated objects are in danger. The changing climate is drying out the soil, so what do you think will happen to the Roman shoes under the earth?

New solar powered listening posts

Vindolanda Excavations