Last updated 13:15, Thursday, 27 November 2008

THE article entitled ‘Forgotten Forts Revealed from the Air’ was rather misleading (Courant, November 21).

The majority of the sites covered by the recent English Heritage survey were already well known and extensively documented, but you imply that thousands of new sites have been revealed.

It is extremely unlikely that anything as substantial as a hill-fort or a medieval village site would have been discovered for the first time in an area as closely studied as the Hadrian’s Wall Corridor.

What the EH survey does highlight is the remarkable range of historic remains along the corridor, from prehistoric at one end of the scale to the recent industrial past at the other.

There has always been a tendency to focus on the Roman occupation of the region while the wealth of medieval and Industrial Revolution sites have been largely ignored.

History lies thickly layered in the Hadrian’s Wall corridor and the Roman occupation represents only a relatively thin sliver of the whole.

It would be great to see the richness of this fascinating heritage being publicised and promoted as much as Hadrian’s Wall itself.

PETRA CARATINI,

Acomb