Turret 39B (Steel Rigg) is one of the two turrets in the mile-long stretch between Milecastles 39 (Castle Nick) and 40 (Winshields), set on the dramatic Whin Sill escarpment immediately east of the modern Steel Rigg car park in Northumberland. Like other Hadrian's Wall turrets, it was a small two-storey stone observation tower (c. 4–4.5 m square internally) integrated into the curtain wall, built in the 120s AD and likely manned intermittently into the later 2nd or 3rd century before being abandoned, as was common along this central sector.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
Its function was signalling and surveillance over the steep northern approaches along the Sill, working in tandem with neighbouring turret 39A and the milecastles to provide line-of-sight coverage of one of the Wall's most defensively commanding stretches. It is unremarkable in itself but contributes to the densely preserved military landscape around Steel Rigg, Crag Lough and Highshield Crags.
Turret 39B has seen no major modern published excavation, and its remains are slight compared with the well-known turret 39A (Peel Gap) discovered nearby in 1986; it is identified primarily through the standard turret-spacing along this sector and limited surface/wall-trace evidence. No significant finds assemblage is recorded specifically for this turret in the published literature.
Turret 39B (Steel Rigg) is one of the two turrets in the mile-long stretch between Milecastles 39 (Castle Nick) and 40 (Winshields), set on the dramatic Whin Sill escarpment immediately east of the modern Steel Rigg car park in Northumberland. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a watch tower site from the Roman period in Britain.
Turret 39B (Steelrigg) 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 40 (Winshields) (0.5 km), Turret 39A (Peel Crag) (0.6 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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