Milecastle 80 was one of a series of

Milecastles A milecastle was a small fort (fortlet), a rectangular fortification built during the period of the Roman Empire. They were placed at intervals of approximately one Roman mile along several major frontiers, for example Hadrian's Wall in Great Br ...

or small fortlets built at intervals of approximately one

Roman mile The mile, sometimes the international mile or statute mile to distinguish it from other miles, is a British imperial unit and United States customary unit of distance; both are based on the older English unit of length equal to 5,280 Engli ...

along Hadrian's Wall ().

Description

The site of Milecastle 80 is in the village of

Bowness-on-Solway Bowness-on-Solway is a village in the Allerdale borough of Cumbria, England. It is situated to the west of Carlisle on the southern side of the Solway Firth estuary separating England and Scotland. The civil parish had a population of 1,126 at ...

. The location corresponds to the site of the Roman fort at Bowness (''

Maia Maia (; Ancient Greek: Μαῖα; also spelled Maie, ; la, Maia), in ancient Greek religion and mythology, is one of the Pleiades and the mother of Hermes, one of the major Greek gods, by Zeus, the king of Olympus. Family Maia is the daugh ...

''). It was presumably replaced by the fort, but the milecastle has not been located in excavations of the fort. It is possible that

coastal erosion Coastal erosion is the loss or displacement of land, or the long-term removal of sediment and rocks along the coastline due to the action of waves, currents, tides, wind-driven water, waterborne ice, or other impacts of storms. The landwa ...

has removed at least some of the remains. It would be expected that Hadrian's Wall terminated here. However, in 1707 Bishop

William Nicolson William Nicolson (1655–1727) was an English churchman, linguist and antiquarian. As a bishop he played a significant part in the House of Lords during the reign of Queen Anne, and left a diary that is an important source for the politics of ...

apparently saw an extension of Hadrian's wall about a quarter of a mile west of Bowness. This would be the equivalent of the spur wall at the east end of the Wall at

Wallsend Wallsend is a town in North Tyneside, England, at the eastern end of Hadrian's Wall. It has a population of 43,842 and lies east of Newcastle upon Tyne. History Roman Wallsend In Roman times, this was the site of the fort of Segedunum. This f ...

. However, its precise location and survival have not been confirmed since.

Associated turrets

Each milecastle on Hadrian's Wall had two associated

turret Turret may refer to: * Turret (architecture), a small tower that projects above the wall of a building * Gun turret, a mechanism of a projectile-firing weapon * Objective turret, an indexable holder of multiple lenses in an optical microscope * Mi ...

structures. These turrets were positioned approximately one-third and two-thirds of a

to the west of the Milecastle, and would probably have been manned by part of the milecastle's garrison. However, on the assumption that Hadrian's Wall terminated at Bowness, it is assumed that any structures to the west of Bowness would be part of the Cumbrian Coast defences beginning with Milefortlet 1. The possible turrets between Milecastle 80 and Milefortlet 1 are known as Tower 0A () and Tower 0B (). There is currently no evidence for the existence of either tower.

References

{{Milecastles 80 Roman sites in Cumbria