The early and the latter days of Roman Silchester

The Daily Express has had two recent reports about discoveries made in the continuing excavations of Silchester - Calleva Atrebatum - in what is now Hampshire.

From the beginnings of the town there is a roof tile stamped with the name of the Emperor Nero. The only other such example comes from a site nearby and may suggest that Calleva was consciously built as a town to indicate Nero’s interest in the colony in Britannia, This is described and put into historical context in Archaeology breakthrough as 'very special' Roman stamp gives 'new information'

From the later years of the town there appears to be evidence of its decline in the archaeological record. During the third century trade and industry apparently declined. and some of the gates were closed or reduced in width. This economic decline of the town was perhaps due to its inland location and dependence on the road network, and a shift to the localisation of trade around villas in the countryside. Other towns on rivers or near the coast do not appear to have witnessed such a contraction. Nevertheless the town still functioned until the post-Roman period but its abandonment, and perhaps deliberate ritual defilement by the early Anglo-Saxons is prrhsps unusual. 

These findings are set out in Archaeologists explain rapid decline of Roman settlement: 'Writing's on the wall'

Most Roman towns either continued in some way or were reoccupied because of their situation or defences by the new elites. Urban economic life as such may well not have really returned until the time of King Alfred and his descendants, but chieftains or churches often sheltered behind abandoned Roman defences. Silchester however was, and remains, abandoned, with new population centres at nearby Reading and Basing - and I am sure I do not need to point out the significance of “ingas” place names.

Reading Museum, alongside its other collections, has a most impressive array of discoveries from earlier excavations at Silchester which fill a room on the upper floor. The display includes a reconstruction model of what is, to date, the only Roman-era church identified in Britain which once stood in Calleva. That alone indicates the continuing urban life there and that it was in contact with the mainstream of the Western Empire and the spread and diffusion of Christianity. British Christians were doubtless worshipping there in the lifetime of St Augustine of Hippo, who died in 430. Who knows, maybe the first British heretic Pelagius had passed by on his journey across the late Roman world that took him to Rome, Palestine and Egypt.