Hadrian's Wall country — Romans, Reivers, and the finest market abbey
Hexham is the market town of the North Tyne valley, built over and around the ruins of a Roman fort and set in the most dramatic stretch of Hadrian's Wall country. Its abbey is built almost entirely from recycled Roman stone — you can see altar stones and inscriptions built sideways into the walls — and the market place that wraps around it has functioned continuously since the 13th century. This is Reiver country: the lawless borderlands where Scottish and English raiding families terrorised the population for 300 years.
Hexham Abbey was founded in 674 CE by Wilfrid of York, who built it on the site of a Roman fort using materials salvaged from the wall. The 7th-century crypt — where Wilfrid is said to have placed the relics that made the abbey a pilgrimage centre — is among the best-preserved early Christian structures in Britain. The town was sacked by the Danes in 876 CE and again by the Scots in 1296 CE, and lies at the heart of the Reivers territory — the Anglo-Scottish borderlands where clans like the Armstrongs and Elliots raided both sides of the border until James I pacified them in 1603.