Maia was the western terminus of Hadrian's Wall, situated at Bowness-on-Solway where the Wall met the Solway Firth. At approximately 7 acres, it was the second-largest fort on the Wall (after Uxelodunum/Stanwix), garrisoned from the 120s CE through the 4th century, and held an auxiliary unit — likely a cohors milliaria — tasked with controlling the fordable estuary crossings into what is now Dumfries and Galloway.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
Maia anchored the western end of the Wall system and guarded the Solway fords, the most obvious route by which raiders from the north could bypass the frontier on foot at low tide. Its scale reflects the strategic importance of this crossing, and the line of milefortlets and watchtowers continuing down the Cumbrian coast from Maia shows that the frontier effectively extended south from the Wall's nominal terminus here.
The fort lies beneath the modern village of Bowness-on-Solway, which has severely limited excavation; its plan is known mainly from antiquarian observation, fragmentary trenching, and geophysical survey, with the defences traceable in places as earthworks and property boundaries. Finds include altars, tombstones and building inscriptions naming the fort, along with the well-known Bowness gold ring and various military fittings, but no full structural plan of internal buildings has been recovered.
Maia was the western terminus of Hadrian's Wall, situated at Bowness-on-Solway where the Wall met the Solway Firth. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a fort site from the Roman period in Britain.
Maia is classified as a Roman fort — a military site in the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer. Roman Britain's archaeology encompasses thousands of sites ranging from legionary fortresses and marching camps to villas, temples and towns.
Several Roman sites lie within a short distance, including Milecastle 80 (0.1 km), Turret 79B (Jeffrey Croft) (0.6 km), Knockcross Roman temporary camp at Grey Havens (0.7 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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