A stretch of Hadrian's Wall long thought to have vanished beneath centuries of farmland has been uncovered on the Solway Coast.

The find has been described as the best-preserved section ever found in this part of Cumbria.

The discovery was made by volunteers working at Drumburgh, near Bowness-on-Solway, as part of a community dig funded by DEFRA's Farming in Protected Landscapes Scheme, administered through the Solway Coast National Landscape.

What began as a modest excavation aimed at tracing the course of the Roman frontier has turned into one of the most significant local finds in recent years.

Excavation work on the section of the wall found. (Image: NQ staff)

The dig began on October 6 and is spearheaded by Grampus Heritage and Training Ltd, an experienced group with three decades of experience in running archaeological training programs and digs throughout Europe.

Mark Graham, from Grampus Heritage and Training Ltd, said: "We were expecting little more than a few broken stones.

"Instead, we've uncovered the foundations of Hadrian's Wall itself, standing four courses high and over four metres wide. It's the best-preserved piece of wall ever found in this area."

The site had been surveyed before, first in 1899 by the antiquarian Francis Haverfield, and again in 1947, but those earlier digs offered only fragments of evidence.

Haverfield's narrow trenches and sketched maps hinted at the wall's path but left questions unanswered about whether the Roman frontier had ever crossed the nearby Brough Marsh.

Foundations of the wall, the cracks in the stone show where the wall was built on. (Image: NQ staff)

Mark explained that modern technology has now filled those gaps. Using geophysical surveys, the team of volunteers systematically measured magnetism and electrical resistance across the field to detect buried stonework.

"We saw two parallel rows of stone, unmistakably Roman engineering," Mark said. "After nearly two millennia, the wall was still there, hidden just below the surface."

Findings around the wall during the dig pointed to the last time the heritage site was seen.

The face of the wall that looked out of the Roman Empire (Image: NQ staff)

All of the pottery fragments found above the wall were medieval, not Roman. That suggests the wall had been systematically dismantled during the Middle Ages, its sandstone blocks likely reused in nearby farmsteads or even in local landmarks such as Drumburgh Castle.

The dig wasn't just about uncovering history, it was a chance for local volunteers to discover the heritage of their home, and allow them to uncover their local history.

Marilyn Wade and Stephen Asquith, volunteers on the dig. (Image: NQ staff)

For Marilyn Wade, volunteering on the Hadrian's Wall dig has been nothing short of a privilege.

She said: "It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see a World Heritage Site and to work on a World Heritage Site.

"It's amazing, thinking of the age of it. And we found a piece of pot yesterday, Roman pot, and we could have been the first people handling that since that was lost on this wall."

For Stephen Asquith, the experience has been a welcome break from his day job.

He said: "I think it's a real privilege. I love anything to do with history. My day job is sitting in an office in front of a computer. So any opportunity I get to come out and do some hands-on archaeology, I'll always take it."

The excavation will be filled in once documentation and sampling are complete, on Monday, October 27, but the data, including 3D models created from digital scans, will preserve the discovery for generations to come.