Peel Gap Tower is an additional watch tower on Hadrian's Wall, located between Turrets 39a (Peel Gap) and 39b (Steel Rigg) west of Housesteads, in a stretch where the regular spacing of turrets left an unusually long gap of approximately 700 m. It was inserted into the curtain wall to cover dead ground in a steep dip in the crags, and was likely active from the later 2nd century through the 3rd or 4th century AD, following the standard occupation pattern of Wall installations.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
The tower is significant because it is the only known example of an "extra" turret added to Hadrian's Wall outside the normal Roman pacing of one turret every third of a Roman mile, demonstrating that the rigid surveying scheme was modified in practice to address tactical blind spots in the rugged Whin Sill terrain.
The tower was discovered and excavated in 1986–89 by the Hadrian's Wall Consolidation programme led by English Heritage, revealing a stone tower base bonded into the curtain wall, with finds including coins, pottery, and an altar fragment. Unlike standard turrets, it lacks an associated milecastle-turret numbering and shows evidence of demolition rather than rebuilding in later phases.
Peel Gap Tower is an additional watch tower on Hadrian's Wall, located between Turrets 39a (Peel Gap) and 39b (Steel Rigg) west of Housesteads, in a stretch where the regular spacing of turrets left an unusually long gap of approximately 700 m. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a watch tower site from the Roman period in Britain.
Peel Gap Tower is classified as a Roman watch tower — 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 Turret 39B (Steelrigg) (0.3 km), Turret 39A (Peel Crag) (0.3 km), Twice Brewed Roman temporary camp (0.8 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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