Turret 10A (Throckley East) was one of the regularly spaced stone watch towers built into the curtain of Hadrian's Wall, positioned between Milecastle 10 (Walbottle Dene) and Milecastle 11 (Throckley Bank Top) in the eastern sector west of Newcastle. Like other turrets on this stretch, it was constructed in the 120s AD under Hadrian and would have been manned by small detachments drawn from the auxiliary garrisons of nearby forts (likely Rudchester or Benwell), providing observation and signalling along the Wall's line until the later 2nd or possibly later 3rd century.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
Its significance is essentially generic to its type: it formed part of the close-interval surveillance system of the Wall, allowing communication between milecastles and reinforcing the controlled frontier in the relatively gentle terrain immediately west of the Tyne crossing. It is not individually notable in the historical record.
Very little is recorded from excavation at this specific turret; the Wall in the Throckley area has been heavily impacted by the modern A69 corridor and post-medieval development, and the turret site is not visible above ground. By analogy with excavated eastern turrets (e.g. 7B, 18A, 26B), it would have been a roughly 4–5 m square stone tower bonded into the Wall, likely with a hearth, platform, and finds limited to coarseware sherds and structural debris.
Turret 10A (Throckley East) was one of the regularly spaced stone watch towers built into the curtain of Hadrian's Wall, positioned between Milecastle 10 (Walbottle Dene) and Milecastle 11 (Throckley Bank Top) in the eastern sector west of Newcastle. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a watch tower site from the Roman period in Britain.
Turret 10A (Throckley East) 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 Milecastle 10 (Walbottle Dene) (0.5 km), Turret 10B (Throckley) (0.5 km), Turret 9B (Walbottle) (1 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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