Overall Impact.     * 1 star.  Not much to see but this turret of great interest to students of the Wall since it’s a survival of the earlier Stanegate Frontier, subsequently incorporated into Hadrian’s Wall. 

Access.     ** 2 star.   Park in the car park for Banks East (Turret 52a) and walk for 100m up the hill to Pike Hill Turret. 

Atmosphere       **  2 stars.   There’s only about one third of the lower courses of the original Turret remaining after C19th and C20th road building.  You need to use your imagination to work out what the original would have looked like.

Other.     ** 2 stars.   If you look southwards, you see a magnificent panorama across the southern fells. 

Pike Hill Turret was designed as a forward lookout in the years before the Wall itself was constructed. 

In the reign of Trajan (Hadrian’s predecessor) the Stanegate was the frontier of the Roman Province.  Forts on the Stanegate situated in the valleys of the River Irthing and the River Tyne needed ‘eyes’ up the northern slope – hence the construction of this small forward lookout with wide views from which troops could communicate with the Stanegate fort at Nether Denton.

Once Hadrian’s Wall was being constructed Pike Hill Turret was subsumed in the wall line (but not allowed to interfere with the new “milecastle and turret” scheme). Presumably it stayed in use and could now also communicate along the Wall.