The Devil's Highway
Londinium to Calleva Atrebatum
The route
The Devil's Highway ran west from Londinium to Calleva Atrebatum at Silchester, the walled town that was the tribal capital of the Atrebates and a major road hub in its own right.
It crossed the Thames at Pontes near Staines, then ran across the Bagshot heaths and the sandy country of east Berkshire, through what is now Crowthorne and Wokingham, before approaching Silchester from the east. The line is direct and fast, chosen for speed across poor and thinly settled ground.
The surveyed line
The Itiner-e survey maps Roman roads across this part of the empire, but attributes no segment to The Devil's Highway 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 A4 and the A30 both run in the same broad corridor without following the Roman line closely. Much of the road's central section crosses ground that was later heath, forest and army training land, so no modern route adopted it.
See also: which modern roads follow Roman lines, and how closely.
Where to see it
Silchester is the destination and it is remarkable: the town was abandoned rather than built over, so the complete circuit of the Roman walls and the amphitheatre survive in open countryside, with a public footpath round the whole circuit.
For the road itself, the wooded stretches around Crowthorne and through Swinley Forest carry a clear agger along public paths.
Common questions
Why is it called the Devil's Highway?
The name is medieval. Anglo-Saxon and later travellers who found a dead straight metalled road running across empty heath, built by no one they knew of, attributed it to the devil. The same instinct named the Devil's Causeway in Northumberland and the Devil's Dyke in Cambridgeshire.
What was at the end of the road?
Calleva Atrebatum at Silchester, a substantial walled Roman town and road junction. Unusually, it was abandoned after the Roman period rather than built over, so its walls and amphitheatre still stand in farmland.