The Multangular Tower is the surviving west angle tower of the Roman legionary fortress of Eboracum, a ten-sided projecting bastion built in the early 4th century AD, probably under Constantius I or Constantine, as part of a comprehensive refortification of the river frontage. It stands to around 5.8 metres of Roman fabric (with medieval heightening above), constructed of small coursed limestone blocks with characteristic tile bonding courses, and originally formed one of eight polygonal interval and corner towers along the south-west wall facing the Ouse.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
As headquarters of Legio VI Victrix and later a coloniae and the seat of the Dux Britanniarum, York was one of the most important military centres in northern Britain, and the monumental projecting towers represent a deliberately impressive architectural statement on the river façade visible to anyone approaching the fortress. The Multangular Tower is the best-preserved upstanding piece of Roman military architecture in northern England.
Excavations within and around the tower, notably by Miller in the 1920s and subsequent work in the Museum Gardens, recovered Roman stone coffins (now displayed inside), confirmed the tower's solid lower courses and the line of the adjoining curtain wall, and demonstrated the late-Roman date through the relationship to earlier 2nd-century defences beneath. The structure was reused as a bastion in the medieval city walls, which preserved its lower
The Multangular Tower is the surviving west angle tower of the Roman legionary fortress of Eboracum, a ten-sided projecting bastion built in the early 4th century AD, probably under Constantius I or Constantine, as part of a comprehensive refortification of the river frontage. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a city wall site from the Roman period in Britain.
Multangular Tower is classified as a Roman city wall — 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 Roman Fortress at York (0.3 km), Eburacum (0.5 km), Roman colonia at York (0.6 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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