The roman town of Calleva Atrebatum started as an Iron Age settlement in a favourable location, atop a gravel spur in the hills of what are now Berkshire and northern Hampshire. Evidence of the Iron Age community (circa 50 B.C. - 50 A.D.) has been unearthed, including their characteristic round dwellings and many wells into the gravel, from which they extracted their water. The Iron Age settlers constructed impressive earthworks encircling the spur, nearly all of which still survive today (the most impressive being found in the south-westerly location known now as Rampier Copse).
These early occupants are generally accepted to have been refugees from the Atrebates tribe, driven out of France by the Roman Invasion; since Calleva translates as "(the town in the) woods", we now have a correct interpretation for the town's roman name: the Atrebates' Town in the Woods.
At least five major Roman thoroughfares in southern England converged on the town - these led to/from such important locations as London, Chichester, Southampton (via Winchester), Cirencester (via modern-day Newbury and Swindon) and Dorchester (near Oxford).
The town is enclosed by a strongly-fortified wall, much of which can still be seen today from the roads that encircle it. Gates in the wall, situated at the entry of four of the main roads (the fifth met one of the others just outside the town), afforded the only access into the town.
The entire town, within the confines of the wall, has long been in a state of ruin and lies beneath what is now a large agricultural field. Aerial photographs taken when the crops are fully-grown clearly show where all the internal roads of the town were, since the crops grow less well directly above them and therefore show up as light or dark lines on the photograph of the field.
A small museum stands on one of the paths that offer access, for walkers, to the field above the town; this mainly contains small artefacts excavated from the ruins and photographs from the archæological digs which were made in the late 19th and early-to-mid 20th centuries. These digs unearthed many valuable objects and allowed the entire town to be mapped and photographed before being covered back over. In more recent times, Reading University has periodically uncovered small regions of the town to re-investigate Roman dwellings of particular interest. Most of the objects and information unearthed in the major early digs can now be viewed at the main museum in Blagrave Street, Reading, where they occupy nearly an entire floor of this enormous building (which, as an added attraction, also has a complete replica of the Bayeaux Tapestry, making it doubly worth a visit).
An excellent booklet, Calleva Atrebatum: a Guide to the roman town at Silchester, can be purchased from Silchester's village pub, the Calleva Arms, for £2·50.
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