Turret 70B was one of the regularly spaced watch towers along Hadrian's Wall, positioned between Milecastle 70 (Braelees) and Milecastle 71 (Wormanby) in the western, low-lying stretch of the Wall west of Carlisle as it approached the Solway Firth. Like other turrets on this sector, it would have been constructed in the 120s AD as part of Hadrian's original frontier scheme and likely remained in use, with periods of abandonment and refurbishment, into the later 2nd or 3rd century. In this western sector the Wall itself was originally built in turf rather than stone, though the turrets were stone-built from the outset.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
Its role was observational and signalling: a two-storey tower providing surveillance over the flat coastal plain and intervisibility with the flanking milecastles and turret 70A, contributing to the controlled frontier zone of the Solway plain where the Wall continued as a turf rampart before transitioning to coastal fortlets and towers (the Cumberland Coast system) beyond Bowness.
Very little is recorded about Turret 70B specifically; the line of the Wall west of Burgh-by-Sands is poorly preserved due to medieval and modern agriculture, and the turret has not been the subject of significant published excavation. Its presumed location is inferred from the standard Roman spacing interval rather than from upstanding remains.
Turret 70B was one of the regularly spaced watch towers along Hadrian's Wall, positioned between Milecastle 70 (Braelees) and Milecastle 71 (Wormanby) in the western, low-lying stretch of the Wall west of Carlisle as it approached the Solway Firth. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a watch tower site from the Roman period in Britain.
Turret 70B 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 71 (Wormanby) (0.5 km), Turret 70A (0.5 km), Turret 71A (0.9 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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