A small Roman gateway fort perched above the Irthing gorge, where the Wall's turf and stone sections meet
Open accessfree to visit at any reasonable time
Substantial ruinsruined, but plenty survives above ground
This milecastle sits right on the cliff edge above the Irthing Gorge, directly over where the Roman bridge at Willowford once crossed the river below, one of the small walled forts the Romans built into the Wall roughly every Roman mile. It’s the point too where the Wall’s building method changed — stone ran east from here towards Willowford, turf ran west for thirty-odd miles to Bowness-on-Solway before being rebuilt in stone — and just to the west, uniquely along the Wall, that stone rebuild bends off the turf-wall’s old line to meet the corner of Birdoswald fort. What’s left of the milecastle itself is low, a rectangular fort attached to the Wall with walls about 2.3 metres thick and gates on the north and south sides. The free, ungated Hadrian’s Wall Path runs alongside between here and Birdoswald, where the Wall itself rises to almost two metres, one of its longest stretches still standing this high.
