Company looks at modern-day cost of Hadrian's Wall

May 25 2009 by Tony Henderson, The Journal

IT would take around 1,500 construction workers, £400m and about two-and-a-half-years to build a modern version of Hadrian's Wall, it has been estimated.

But at least the Emperor Hadrian didn’t have to worry about planning and environmental hurdles or health and safety.

Against a backdrop of series of re-enactment events this week around the Wall, support services and construction company Carillion was asked by Hexham-based Hadrian’s Wall Heritage Ltd to produce a rough estimate of the cost of building a new Wall. The Living Frontier programme aims to bring 2,000 years of history to life along Hadrian’s Wall – one of the biggest engineering projects undertaken by the Roman Empire.

Historians believe it took about six years to build the original Wall.

Linda Tuttiett, chief executive of Hadrian’s Wall Heritage, said: “It can be difficult for some people looking at what remains of Hadrian’s Wall to really appreciate quite what an extraordinary achievement it was. These figures help to show that even 2,000 years later it would be a massive engineering challenge to build a wall from coast to coast.

“The Roman soldiers aren’t thought to have worked on the construction of the Wall continuously and of course they didn’t have access to the equipment that modern-day construction companies have. So for the Romans to have completed the Wall in just six years, across some very difficult terrain, is really very impressive.”

Carillion considers that building a new Wall would involve using nearly 4 million tonnes of material and the total cost would be in the order of £300m to £400m. A spokesperson from Carillion said: “This is just a very rough estimation but broadly speaking, sourcing and distributing the vast quantities of stone that would be needed would be just one of the challenges in carrying out this project.

“Obtaining planning permission and getting the necessary finance would be challenging. Significant modern day environmental and ecological issues associated with a project of this scale would probably prevent it ever happening at all.

“Finding enough skilled labour to meet the construction programme and the logistics of managing a project on this kind of scale would also be key.

“The current health and safety regulations are of course rather more onerous than in Hadrian’s day and a new access road along the length of the Wall would need to be built.”

The Living Frontier will see hundreds of Romans, Vikings, Roundheads, Cavaliers and Border Reivers re-garrisoning historic sites across Hadrian’s Wall Country.

It is being managed by Hadrian’s Wall Heritage Ltd as part of culture10’s programme of festivals and events for the North East and has been extended westwards into Cumbria through the support of Carlisle Renaissance.

The highlight of The Living Frontier events will be a pageant in Corbridge on Saturday. The event will bring together 500 performers and re-enactors and their frontier stories in a spectacular show of music, drama, and technical wizardry, ending in the burning of a 78ft-long Viking boat.

Director John Farquhar-Smith said the show would be geared around a time machine theme which would take travellers through Roman, Viking, Civil War and Reivers eras. He said: “Having all these re-enactors in one place was too good a chance to miss.”