Christianity on Hadrian’s Wall in The Catholic Herald

My article ‘Christianity on Hadrian’s Wall’ has just been published in the December edition of The Catholic Herald. In the article I discuss a discovery announced in August this year, a fragment of a leaden chalice dating from the 5th century covered with Christian graffiti. This was excavated from an apsidal building at the Roman fort of Vindolanda (Chesterholm) that seems to be a post-Roman church constructed within an earlier building after the site went out of military use. The Vindolanda is a unique find so far from the post-Roman era, and lends weight to the idea that some of the former forts of Hadrian’s Wall became religious sites. The article explores this question as well as the broader evidence for early Christianity on Hadrian’s Wall and in the ‘Old North’ (which is today northern England and southern Scotland) before and after the withdrawal of the legions.