The Devil's Causeway
The Portgate to Berwick
The route
The Devil's Causeway branched from Dere Street at the Portgate, on the high ground north of Corbridge where Dere Street crosses Hadrian's Wall, and ran north-east across Northumberland to the mouth of the Tweed near Berwick, about fifty-five miles.
It crossed the Wansbeck, the Coquet and the Aln, serving the forts and settlements of the north-east coastal plain. Its purpose was to give the army a route up the eastern side of Northumberland without funnelling everything through the Cheviot crossings that Dere Street used.
The surveyed line
The Itiner-e survey maps Roman roads across this part of the empire, but attributes no segment to The Devil's Causeway by name, so there is no measured line to draw here. The road is well attested by archaeology and by the modern roads that still follow it.
The road today
The A697 touches, crosses and briefly follows the line in the middle of the county, and minor roads and farm tracks sit on it further north. No major modern road took it up, so much of its length crosses open farmland as a hedge line, a field boundary or a right of way.
See also: which modern roads follow Roman lines, and how closely.
Where to see it
Ordnance Survey maps mark long stretches simply as Roman Road, and the line is easy to follow on the ground north of Longframlington and toward Lowick.
The country it crosses is quiet and open, and the road's straightness across the rolling Northumberland farmland is plain from any rise.
Common questions
Why is it called the Devil's Causeway?
The same medieval instinct that named the Devil's Highway in Berkshire. A dead straight road running for sixty miles across empty country, built by nobody within memory, was easier to attribute to the devil than to explain.
Where did the Devil's Causeway go?
From a junction with Dere Street at the Portgate, north of Corbridge, north-east across Northumberland to the mouth of the Tweed at Berwick, about fifty-five miles.