Turret 43B was one of the regularly-spaced stone watch towers built along Hadrian's Wall in the AD 122–128 construction phase, situated on the high crags between Milecastle 43 (Great Chesters) and Milecastle 44 (Allolee), in the central sector of the Wall where it runs along the Whin Sill escarpment. Like other turrets in this stretch, it would have been a roughly 4–5m square tower of two storeys, integrated into the curtain wall, manned by a small detachment likely drawn from the garrison at Aesica (Great Chesters).
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
Its role was observation and signalling along a particularly dramatic stretch of the frontier, where the natural defence of the cliffs reduced the tactical need for the wall itself but maintained the importance of visual control northward over the forward zone. It forms part of the sequence of turrets in this central sector which were among the earliest to be abandoned, many being decommissioned and walled up in the later 2nd century when the Wall's surveillance regime was rationalised.
Turret 43B has seen limited modern excavation compared to better-known turrets such as 44B (Mucklebank) or 41A (Caw Gap), and its remains are consolidated but unspectacular; specific finds assemblages from this turret are not prominent in the published record. Its identification and basic plan rest on the systematic surveys of the Wall (notably
Turret 43B was one of the regularly-spaced stone watch towers built along Hadrian's Wall in the AD 122–128 construction phase, situated on the high crags between Milecastle 43 (Great Chesters) and Milecastle 44 (Allolee), in the central sector of the Wall where it runs along the Whin Sill escarpment. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a watch tower site from the Roman period in Britain.
Turret 43B (Allolee 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 44 (Allolee) (0.5 km), Turret 43A (Cockmount Hill) (0.5 km), Turret 44A (Allolee West) (0.9 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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