Milecastle 34 (Grindon) is a milecastle on Hadrian's Wall, located on a steep slope west of Sewingshields Crags between Milecastle 33 (Shield-on-the-Wall) and Milecastle 35 (Sewingshields). Built in the early 130s AD as part of the original Wall scheme and occupied, with breaks, into the late Roman period, it would have housed a small detachment (likely 8–32 men) drawn from a nearby auxiliary garrison, controlling a gated crossing through the Wall.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
As one of the regularly spaced fortlets on the central crags sector of the Wall, MC 34 contributed to the system of controlled movement, surveillance, and frontier policing rather than serving as a major garrison post. Its position on difficult sloping ground also illustrates the rigid Roman insistence on milecastle spacing regardless of local topography.
The site is poorly preserved and has not been subject to major modern excavation; it is known largely from surface traces, antiquarian observation, and the Wall surveys of Collingwood Bruce and later the English Heritage/Historic England Hadrian's Wall mapping programme. Its plan type (long-axis or short-axis) and gateway form remain uncertain, and no significant artefactual assemblage has been published from the site itself.
Milecastle 34 (Grindon) is a milecastle on Hadrian's Wall, located on a steep slope west of Sewingshields Crags between Milecastle 33 (Shield-on-the-Wall) and Milecastle 35 (Sewingshields). It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a fortlet site from the Roman period in Britain.
Milecastle 34 (Grindon) is classified as a Roman fortlet — 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 Coesike West temporary camps (0.4 km), Turret 33B (Coesike) (0.4 km), Turret 34A (Grindon West) (0.4 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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