A Roman watch tower already standing before Hadrian's Wall was built, later joined to it at an unusual angle
Open accessfree to visit at any reasonable time
Substantial ruinsruined, but plenty survives above ground
Long before Hadrian’s Wall reached this part of Cumbria, Roman soldiers built a watch tower on Pike Hill to signal to forts along the Stanegate, the road that marked the frontier here earlier, under the emperor Trajan. When the Wall arrived, from about AD 122, its builders ran the line straight through the tower’s existing spot rather than moving it, so unlike the turrets built directly into the Wall nearby, Pike Hill meets it at roughly a 45-degree angle, and the Wall’s ditch zigzags around it to keep going. Soldiers stationed there kept relaying messages between the forts at Castlesteads and Birdoswald even after the Wall was finished, and archaeologists have found traces of a hearth, Roman pottery and a broken stone with part of the emperor Antoninus Pius’s name cut into it, possibly recording repairs made in his reign. Only a fragment of the tower survives; workers cutting a road through the site in 1870 destroyed most of it, and what’s left now stands beside Banks East Turret’s car park, a short stretch of the Hadrian’s Wall Path away.
