Turret 57B (Lea Hill) was one of the small stone watch towers built into the curtain of Hadrian's Wall, located between Milecastle 57 (Cambeckhill) and Milecastle 58 (Newtown), in the sector west of the River Irthing. Like other turrets on the Wall, it was constructed in the 120s AD under Hadrian and would have been manned by a small detachment, probably four to eight soldiers drawn from the auxiliary garrisons of nearby forts such as Castlesteads (Camboglanna), roughly 2 km to the east.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
Its role was observational and communicative — providing surveillance over the gently rolling ground south of the Wall and signalling between turrets and milecastles along the frontier. It is not individually distinguished in the historical or epigraphic record, functioning as one of the routine components of the Wall's regular spacing system.
Turret 57B has seen little detailed modern excavation and is poorly preserved compared with better-known turrets further east; its position is known from the regular Wall-mile spacing rather than from substantial upstanding remains. No significant finds assemblage is published for it, and what is inferred about its construction (recessed stone tower bonded into the Wall, with a ground-floor doorway and probable upper storey) derives from comparison with excavated turrets such as 48A (Willowford East) and 49B (Birdoswald).
Turret 57B (Lea Hill) was one of the small stone watch towers built into the curtain of Hadrian's Wall, located between Milecastle 57 (Cambeckhill) and Milecastle 58 (Newtown), in the sector west of the River Irthing. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a watch tower site from the Roman period in Britain.
Turret 57B 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 57A (Beck) (0.5 km), Milecastle 58 (Newtown) (0.5 km), Milecastle 57 (Cambeckhill) (1 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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