Born into poverty in Derby in 1723, William Hutton became a prosperous bookseller in Birmingham and a celebrated historian. In 1801, he is considered to have been the first person in recent history to have walked the entirety of Hadrian's Wall. At the age of 78, he walked from his home in Birmingham to Carlisle and continued to Bowness-on-Solway at the western end of the wall. He then walked to Wallsend at the eastern end, before retracing his steps back to Carlisle, thereby walking the wall twice before returning, on foot, to Birmingham. He walked a total distance of 601 miles, and all in a single pair of shoes that are today in the collection of the Birmingham Museum. On completion of his walk, William Hutton wrote the History of The Roman Wall, which was first published in 1802 to widespread acclaim. Neither of William Hutton’s two children had any surviving issue. His descendants stem from Thomas, the eldest son of his brother Samuel, who had pre-deceased him. In 2024, two of his 5th Great Grand Nephews, when not quite at the age when William Hutton himself had embarked on his adventure, undertook a walk of the wall from west to east in their ancestor’s memory, 223 years, almost to the day, after his far more extraordinary exploits. This republishing of The History of The Roman Wall is intended as a modest means of not only remembering a remarkable man of his time, but also in the hope that those who undertake their own walk of Hadrian’s Wall in the twenty first century may enjoy reflecting in whose footsteps they are, quite literally, following.