by Ice.Maiden » 01 Mar 2012, 17:41
I've never seen that part of Hadrian's Wall, but its length is dotted with remains of forts, castles and look-out turrets. The word cat may come from a cathedra (Latin, "chair", from Greek, kathedra, "seat"), but also, it's said that the soldiers kept cats in the turrets, to kill off all the mice. That seems feasible, being as though they kept food and provisions there, so maybe there was a famous black cat at some stage.
Funny though - the word "black" crops up a lot in the area. Black Cat's Dyke, the Black Bull pub (which is now on a site which led directly along Hadrian's Wall). St. Bede, who was a priest and historian, was one of the first to write about the history of the Romans to the Anglo Saxon settlers, although much of it's discarded by later historians, and he mentions "black" this and that. You even have black pudding, which's obviously black, but's said to originate in Stornoway, Scotland. A part of Hadrian's Wall is approx. half a mile from Scotland, although it's a misconception that the wall was built to divide the 2 countries. It covers parts of Cumbria, Northumberland and Newcastle, but relics from the Roman era've been found on the Staffordshire Moors and elsewhere down the country.
The Hadrian's Wall Path passes a section of wall at Black Carts, so I think the reference to anything "black" probably comes from way back in history, when life was hard up there, and perhaps everything DID seem black and dismal at times.