One group of each legion would create the foundations and build the milecastles and turrets and then other cohorts would follow, building the wall itself. [24] Subsequently, the Turf Wall was demolished and replaced with a stone wall. What was the point in building Hadrian's wall if it's original height was only 3-5 meters tops? Construction was divided into lengths of about 8 kilometres (5 mi). The initial plan called for a ditch and wall with 80 small gated milecastle fortlets, one placed every Roman mile, holding a few dozen troops each, and pairs of evenly-spaced intermediate turrets used for observation and signalling. Our journalism costs money and we rely on advertising, print and digital revenues to help to support them. Their numbers fluctuated throughout the occupation, but may have been around 9,000 strong in general, including infantry and cavalry. the Wall of Hadrian, using his family name of Aelius). The maps for Cumberland and Northumberland not only show the wall as a major feature, but are ornamented with drawings of Roman finds, together with, in the case of the Cumberland map, a cartouche in which he sets out a description of the wall itself. Hadrian's Wall was declared a World Heritage Site in 1987, and in 2005 it became part of the transnational "Frontiers of the Roman Empire" World Heritage Site, which also includes sites in Germany. Within a few years it was decided to add a total of 14-17 (sources disagree) full-sized forts along the length of the wall, including Housesteads and Birdoswald, each holding between 500 and 1,000 auxiliary troops (no legions were posted to the wall). Wiki User Answered . Scholars disagree over how much of a threat the inhabitants of northern Britain really presented and whether there was any economic advantage in defending and garrisoning a fixed line of defences like the Wall, rather than conquering and annexing what has become Northumberland and the Scottish Lowlands and defending the territory with a loose arrangement of forts. The turf wall was 6 metres wide (20 ft) and around 3.5 metres (11.5 ft) high. The 1991 American romantic action adventure film, The wall has also been featured in recent films such as. Civil problems in other parts of the Empire, notably in the Middle East, inspired the emperor's decision for a massive fortification in Great Britain. It is recorded that the wall, when originally built in AD 122 in the reign of the emperor Hadrian, was as much as 11 feet high and eight feet wide. [18] People within and beyond the frontier travelled through it each day when conducting business, and organised check-points like those offered by Hadrian's Wall provided good opportunities for taxation.