2025.10 UK & More - Alnwick Gardens & Corbridge Roman Town

2025.10 UK & More – Alnwick Gardens & Corbridge Roman Town

North of Newcastle upon Tyne is Alnwick (pronounced An-nick, yes the L and W were cut from the pronunciation list), home to an interesting garden, and just west of Newcastle is Corbridge, a Roman era town.

ALnwick Gardens

There was one thing we wanted to visit at the Gardens — it has a poison garden. Alnwick was about 30 minute or so north of Newcastle along the main highway. Once you enter Alnwick, signage is good to find the main parking lot for the gardens. During our visit the castle was closed and no public tours were available. The castle’s current claim to fame was that it was used as part of a set for the Harry Potter movie series.

The gardens are fairly compact, however the poison garden is a subset within the grounds. We arrived early in the morning, and with clear skies, the cool morning was refreshing and we happily entertained the park attendants comparing Northern England weather with being in a major city in Southern Ontario. Below are a few pictures from the poison garden. I found the short tour informative, and as a non-UK resident learned that the hedges — that are everywhere on the side of roads — are poisonous! (slideshow below)

Beside the garden was another building with more information, but most important to me was a LEGO model of the garden (slideshow).

And here are a few more pictures (another slideshow) during our visit of the gardens:

Corbridge Roman Town

After leaving Newcastle-upon-Tyne we headed west towards the Lake District, and not far from the city is this Roman ruin site, Corbridge. We arrived late in the day, but we were able to walk the grounds and due to the odd cloud filled with rain, spent most of our time in the welcome center/museum to look at artifacts that were unearthed at this location.

The history of this site was that it is a rare example that the Romans built a fort bordering an existing town and trading post. The Roman fort potentially contributed to the site’s popularity for locals and traders. Most interesting was that the site was abandoned sometime after the Romans left England, but even the local knowledge of the former fort and town also was lost at some time. In the 1800s though, through farming expansion in the area, the ruins were discovered.

This site is a collection of ruins, and a building containing artifacts found through uncovering the ruins. Within the building, the single coolest part was a trove of Roman soldier items. Supposedly from Roman records, troops were called away from the fort to relocate. As the instruction was it to be a temporary relocation, some soldiers left their armour and other items into trunks and left in storage. Obviously, with their discovery not all soldiers returned and these troves provided an excellent example of how Roman armour was constructed. When compared side-by-side to a costume used for a movie, the costumers did an excellent job of recreating the original. (slideshow below)

I took a picture of this map, as this town was truly very close to Hadrian’s Wall. I wanted to stop at a few locations to see it, however fading daylight prevented us from stopping multiple times, instead we stopped at one spot, Walltown. If the true scale of the wall was upwards of 12 feet high, and between 8-10 feet thick, this would have been an extremely imposing piece of construction.

From the slideshow below, the light was fading, so exploring much of the wall was not possible. In fairness, the drive from the road up to the site was spectacular, taking up high over the road and past many fields dotted with sheep.