Silchester - Calleva Atrebatum

Signpost for Roman Silchester

Like Wroxeter, which we visited in March of this year, Silchester - known to the Romans as Calleva Atrebatum - didn't really take off as a settlement in modern times.  Most people would be hard pushed to pinpoint Silchester on a map and myself and BAM (Best Aussie Mate) were no exceptions, before we did this walking trip!

The modern-day village of Silchester is located in the north of Hampshire, in the countryside between Basingstoke and Reading, just outside a town called Tadley.  Although there is a hotel in Silchester, the reviews were off-putting, so we did some research and decided to start our walk in Stratfield Mortimer in Berkshire.  Mortimer station is located, quite handily, on a small branch line that runs between Reading and Basingstoke.  Although it's a small line, it dates back to the early days of rail travel and the station and line has been in operation since 1848!

Reading to Basingstoke line

Like a lot of railway stations around Berkshire and Oxfordshire, Mortimer station is quite far from the main village of Mortimer Common.  It might seem a bit incongruous to 21st century travellers, but I believe this is evidence of a stubborn compromise for 19th century villagers who weren't all that interested in having steam-driven technology ploughing through their idyllic lives.

Victuals and lodging

We travelled down from London Waterloo, via Basingstoke, arriving at Mortimer just in time for a delicious curry at a popular local restaurant called The Cinnamon Tree.  Time-travelling 19th century Mortimerians might well be bewildered by a restaurant in their village specialising in Bangladeshi and Indian cuisine, but we were well-pleased, feasting on Misty Lau and Murgh Jalfrazi.

Our room at the B&B

Little Park Farm B&B

BAM had booked us in to a lovely B&B called Little Park Farm, which is in a 19th-century farmhouse, a short distance from Mortimer station.  We stayed in a Twin room in the loft, with lovely views over the surrounding countryside.  For city-dwellers like us, it's great to wake up in the countryside, with the smell of bacon being fried in the kitchen and the sound of birds twittering in the garden.  Once we'd had our fill of food and coffee, we ventured out into the countryside and set off in the direction of Silchester.

Little Park Farm to the Devil's Highway (1.2 miles)

BAM walking through a field of wheat

Like most Roman settlements, Calleva Atrebatum had a Roman road, which ran from modern-day Silchester all the way to London.  As it passes through this part of Berkshire, the Roman road is known as the Devil's Highway, although I couldn't quite find out why it's called this.  Perhaps, it was related to the fact that the road brought Roman invaders to what was a regional Celtic capital?  Perhaps, the name comes from a later time, when weary travellers along this road would have journeyed in fear of footpads and highwaymen?  Whatever the reason, the name in itself was enough to attract our attention, so our first 1.2 miles involved a loop from Little Park farm, walking down the farm driveway to the main Beech Hill road (known, oddly, as The Forehead).  Opposite Perrins Farm, we turned onto a public footpath leading through some beautiful wheatfields, which eventually brought us onto the Devil's Highway at the Home Farm, just outside Fair Cross.

The Devil's Highway

Yesterday's weather was a bit unsure of itself and our arrival at the Devil's Highway was greeted with a shower of rain which, in the nature of English showers, decided to finish, as soon as we'd got our raincoats out of our bags.  We noticed a group of young people with maps standing at the junction to Fair Cross, looking a bit uncertain as to whether or not the Devil's Highway was the right option for them.

The Devil's Highway to Calleva Atrebatum (3 miles)


Roman roads are very easy to walk on!  They're straight, for a start, so no chance of getting lost and, unlike most of the main Roman roads, which have been superseded by national highways and motorways, the Devil's Highway to Calleva Atrebatum is, blissfully, devoid of modern phenomena such as trains, planes or automobiles!  We passed south of Little Park Farm again, then through Butler's Land, where we passed another group of young people with maps and then crossed onto a small country road leading to a railway bridge.

Field full of cornflowers

We were quite startled when a silver-haired lady called Ann suddenly appeared from a gap in the hedge.  As it turned out, she is a local leader for the Duke of Edinburgh awards and had been looking for some of the same young people we'd seen wandering around the area with maps! We had a quick chat, then crossed the railway bridge, coming to a T-junction, where we left the road and crossed a hilly field full of the most amazing cornflowers, daisies and poppies.  The end of the field brought us onto the road again and the amphitheatre of Calleva Atrebatum.

Calleva Atrebatum to Silchester (0.8 miles)

The Amphitheatre at Calleva Atrebatum

The Roman name for the settle Calleva Atrebatum could possibly have been adapted from a local Celtic name that translates something like, 'wooded place where the Atrebates tribe live'.  Calleva sounds like a Romanisation of the Celtic word for wood/forest, if you compare the Irish word coillte or the Welsh coedwig.  I wonder if the origin of the name Silchester, also has its roots in the Latin word for wood/forest Silva? The Atrebates occupied most of modern-day Berkshire and they were unusual in that their culture seems to have more in common with Belgic tribes living in (modern-day) France, than the other Celtic tribes that were living around them in Britain.

The churchyard at St Mary's

Wedding guests

One mystery surrounding the Celtic settlement at Calleva Atrebatum was the fact that a stone with Ogham script was found on the site.  Ogham is mostly associated with Ireland and there are very few examples of Ogham script in England, the others being found exclusively in Cornwall in Devon.  The presence of Ogham in Silchester is attributed to a lone Irish settler, so perhaps, with its Belgic and Irish connections, Calleva Atrebatum was an ancient melting-pot of Celtic cultures?

Another mystery surrounding the site is the reason for its having been abandoned.  During the Roman times, it's believed that several thousand people lived in Calleva Atrebatum.  The site not only contained an amphitheatre, which you can still see today, but also Roman baths, temples, a mansion and a Forum Basilica.  According to The Guardian's Heritage writer, Maev Kennedy, in her article from 1999, the site might have been cursed by the Anglo-Saxons, evidenced by ritualistic remains involving a dog's bones!

Silchester Town Life Project

Excavation at Silchester Roman site

Whatever the reason for its abandonment, Calleva Atrebatum has an air of otherworldiness about it.  Just inside the walls of the site is a beautiful church called St Mary the Virgin.  We stopped for lunch in the churchyard and watched wedding guests milling around the church, congratulating a newly-married couple.  We then continued our walk through the heart of the ancient settlement, passing a group of young excavators from the Department of Archaeology at the University of Reading, who are currently working on the Silchester Town Life Project.  Eventually we came to a road at the edge of Silchester, where we turned around again in the direction of Mortimer.

Silchester to Mortimer (1.4 miles)

Sign post for Wall Lane

We had to walk along a fairly busy road, past Catthawlands Farm, before turning onto a quieter road called Wall Lane and back-tracking past the Roman walls and onto a public bridleway that took us all the way to Mortimer.  We had intended to take a smaller public footpath to Mortimer, rather than the bridleway, but I'm glad we went the way we did, as the bridleway passed through some lovely countryside, full of sheep and horses, past the Nine Acre copse and Simms Stud Farm, which is on the outskirts of Mortimer village.

Horses at Simm's stud farm

The wedding at St Mary's and the bridleway passing a stud farm has us thinking about all kinds of horsey-matrimonial connections we'd never thought of before.  It's interesting that the word groom is used mainly in two contexts, ie. a man who is getting married (or has just got married) and the person who looks after a horse.  It's also interesting that the word bride is very similar to the word bridle, ie. the idea that young, free women are bridled by marriage and reigned in by their new husbands, who are, by definition 'house bound'.  Horses were incredibly important to the development of modern technologies and societies, but it's not very flattering for a young woman to be described in language usually reserved for horses! 

Boundary marker

Another thing that caught our eyes on the way into Mortimer was an old boundary post, which marked the border between Hampshire and Berkshire.  I'd seen references to these on my Ordnance Survey map, but this is the first one we've spotted!

Mortimer to Wokefield Common (2.3 miles)

Wood for the signs?

The rain came on again as we sat at the church in Mortimer.  Mortimer seems like a nice place - quiet Berkshire village life went on all around us, as we sat munching our chocolate Koala bears!  Passing a playing field, we skirted around the north of the village and then took a path through Starvale Woods, eventually leading us to Wokefield Common on the edge of a village called Burghfield Common.  The woods were really beautiful, but it's always harder to orientate yourself in woodland and the bewildering array of signs for public footpaths and bridleways meant we couldn't see the wood for the signs! 

We got a little bit lost, but eventually made it to a crossroads, where DoE Ann spotted us and stopped her car to give us an update on her groups and an interesting history lesson about Mortimer Common and the Silchester Roman site.  We would loved to have spent more time talking to her, as she seems to know her local history really well, but time was pushing on and we had a train to catch.

Wokefield Common to Mortimer Station (2 miles)

Wheat fields

The last two miles brought us down Lockram Lane, then through some amazing wheatfields and hilly country, passing over Lockram Brook, we took a wrong turning and detoured down to Mann's Farm, then walked along the road to Wheat's Farm where we joined our original path, going downhill to Mortimer Station, just in time for our connection to Basingstoke and back to London.   

Access for Wheelchair Users

Wokefield Common

Again, I'm basing this on someone using a heavy, electric wheelchair.  I would start this walk at Beech Hill, rather than Little Park Farm or Mortimer Station.  The second part of the walk I've described above, along the Devil's Highway, is completely accessible and relatively smooth-going, until you get to the T-junction before Calleva Atrebatum.  At the T-junction you could turn left along a small country lane, then right to the gates of St Mary's Church.  The Roman site seems to be, for the most part, wheelchair accessible.  We didn't walk on the walls of the site but, from a distance, they looked really inaccessible to wheelchair users.  

Church at Stratfield Mortimer

I wouldn't recommend wheelchairing along the roads around Silchester and the bridleway to Mortimer was also not accessible.  Some of the paths in Wokefield Common seemed accessible, but the rest of the route described above, especially the last two miles, would not be accessible, unfortunately.  




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All images were taken by myself or BAM, please feel free to use these images under the following Creative Commons license:

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