Turret 39A, known as Peel Crag turret, was one of the small stone watchtowers built into the curtain of Hadrian's Wall between Milecastles 39 (Castle Nick) and 40 (Winshields), constructed in the 120s AD under Hadrian. Like other turrets on the central crags sector, it was a modest two-storey structure roughly 4-5 m square internally, recessed into the Wall and providing observation across the broken ground south of the Whin Sill escarpment.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
As part of the regular surveillance system spaced at third-of-a-mile intervals along the Wall, it contributed to short-range signalling and observation in one of the most strategically dramatic sectors, where the Wall runs along the crest of Peel Crag. Turrets in this central sector were among those abandoned and demolished relatively early, probably in the later 2nd century, as the garrison rationalised the Wall's installations.
Turret 39A has been identified along the line of the Wall on Peel Crag but, unlike its better-known neighbours (Castle Nick milecastle and Turret 39B/Peel Gap), it has seen only limited investigation and its remains are slight; no significant finds assemblage is published for it. The nearby discovery of the unplanned Peel Gap tower in 1986 demonstrated that the standard turret spacing was supplemented here where visibility demanded it, providing useful context for understanding 39A's function.
Turret 39A, known as Peel Crag turret, was one of the small stone watchtowers built into the curtain of Hadrian's Wall between Milecastles 39 (Castle Nick) and 40 (Winshields), constructed in the 120s AD under Hadrian. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a watch tower site from the Roman period in Britain.
Turret 39A (Peel Crag) 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 Peel Gap Tower (0.3 km), Milecastle 39 (Castle Nick) (0.4 km), Turret 39B (Steelrigg) (0.6 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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