Turret 34B was one of the small, regularly-spaced observation towers built into the curtain of Hadrian's Wall, located in the central sector east of Housesteads (Vercovicium) in the stretch running through the Sewingshields area. Like other turrets on the Wall, it was constructed in the 120s AD as part of Hadrian's frontier scheme, with a square stone tower (roughly 4–5 m internally) projecting from the rear face of the Wall, and was occupied intermittently into the later 2nd century before being decommissioned, as was typical of central-sector turrets.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
Together with its paired turret (34A) between Milecastles 34 (Grindon) and 35 (Sewingshields), it provided close-interval surveillance along an exposed crag-and-moorland stretch of the frontier, with the small garrison likely drawn from the auxiliary units based at Housesteads. It is not individually distinguished in the literature, being one of the many turrets whose function was purely tactical observation and signalling.
Relatively little has been published specifically on Turret 34B; it has not been the subject of major modern excavation, and its remains are slight compared to better-preserved turrets such as 7B (Denton) or 26B (Brunton). Knowledge of it derives largely from the standard Wall surveys (notably the work of Collingwood Bruce, and later the Hadrian's Wall consolidation programmes), which confirm its position and basic
Turret 34B was one of the small, regularly-spaced observation towers built into the curtain of Hadrian's Wall, located in the central sector east of Housesteads (Vercovicium) in the stretch running through the Sewingshields area. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a watch tower site from the Roman period in Britain.
Turret 34B 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 34A (Grindon West) (0.4 km), Milecastle 35 (Sewingshields) (0.4 km), Grindon School Roman temporary camp (0.7 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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