Answering the digital call of Hadrian's Wall Cavalry

What did the Romans ever do for us?

2017 was a year packed with exhibitions and events about Hadrian’s Cavalry. The Hadrian’s Wall Country consortium wanted this information to have a digital presence.

They also asked me to revamp their web Learning section to make it more helpful for students and teachers.

As the daughter of a teacher and a massive fan of history, I felt I could put myself in the shoes of students and teachers very easily. Also a previous project writing the Visiting section for Northumberland National Park meant I already had an understanding of the area.

Solution

This project was a mixture of revamping and migrating web content from the existing learning section and writing content from scratch for the Cavalry.

Creating the Cavalry section

I organised scores of Cavalry documents, graphics, leaflet and poster content and images into logical pages including:

• By shield and sword – cavalry weapons
• Behind the mask – cavalry armour
• A steed of steel? – cavalry horses

For the Turma! Cavalry in action page, there were very few photos that corresponded to the description of the re-enactment. I used my graphic design skills to screenshot images such as the Roman saddle from the YouTube video.

Rejuvenating the Learning section

For the Learning section, I put myself in the shoes of students and teachers. What questions did they need answering? What could help their homework the most?

I unearthed information hidden in Word documents to make the learning section more useful. Cross-referencing Hadrian’s Cavalry within existing pages gave it more cohesion. I also saved the project time by suggesting I made edits to a hidden Learning section. This could then be made live once approved by the consortium’s Education Group.

Making these updates pushed the outdated content management system to its limits. So being able to convert graphics and even hand-code HTML all came in handy.