Turret 15B was one of the regularly spaced stone watch towers built along Hadrian's Wall, positioned between Milecastles 15 and 16 in the central-eastern sector west of Newcastle (Pons Aelius). Like its paired turrets along the Wall, it would have been constructed in the 120s AD under Hadrian and occupied, with interruptions, into the later 2nd or 3rd century, functioning as a small two-storey observation and signalling post manned by a handful of auxiliary soldiers detached from a nearby fort.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
Its role was primarily one of surveillance and communication, providing visual coverage of the frontier between adjacent milecastles and relaying signals along the Wall line. In this eastern stretch, close to the Tyne corridor, such turrets helped regulate movement across what was both a military barrier and a controlled customs frontier.
Turret 15B is poorly known on the ground: this stretch of the Wall lies beneath the modern suburban and industrial landscape east of Newcastle, and no substantial published excavation of this specific turret is recorded. Its existence is inferred from the standard Hadrianic spacing rather than from upstanding remains.
Turret 15B was one of the regularly spaced stone watch towers built along Hadrian's Wall, positioned between Milecastles 15 and 16 in the central-eastern sector west of Newcastle (Pons Aelius). It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a watch tower site from the Roman period in Britain.
Turret 15B 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 16 (Harlow Hill) (0.5 km), Turret 15A (0.5 km), Turret 16A (1 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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