Cawfields is a location where the Roman Wall is accessed and where a quarry was dug, which took part of the Roman wall away with it when it was dug in the 1940s. The wall can be walked from here, and the parking is located in front of the quarry with a short walk to the wall and milecastle. There are lovely views from here.
Upon leaving the car, I walked around the side of the quarry. On the steep hill in the photograph below, the old Roman Wall rises here before the cliff's edge has been taken away, with the remaining wall.
The views are stunning from Milecastle 42. These Milecastles were lookout towers for the Roman army so that they could see the land on the other side and defend their claimed territory. The milecastles were located almost every two kilometers, and this one is located in a weak point in the wall where it could be easy to miss intruders arriving from the flat part of the land on the opposite side of the wall.
Milecastles would have had several men standing to watch at all hours at these points. From this point, the fort at Housesteads is about eight and a half files away.
This looks like a particularly large Milecastle to me when compared with some of the other ones.
Have you ever visited Cawfields or walked part of the Roman Hadrian's Wall?
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