Pye Road
Camulodunum to Venta Icenorum
The route
The Pye Road ran north from Camulodunum at Colchester, the first Roman colony in Britain, to Venta Icenorum at Caistor St Edmund, the civitas capital of the Iceni just south of modern Norwich.
It crossed the Stour near Stratford St Mary, ran up through Suffolk past the small town at Coddenham, crossed the Waveney at Scole where a substantial roadside settlement grew up, and continued over the Tas to Caistor. Its purpose was administrative: it tied the defeated Iceni to the colony that symbolised Roman power in the region.
The surveyed line
The Itiner-e survey maps Roman roads across this part of the empire, but attributes no segment to Pye Road 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 A140 between Ipswich and Norwich follows the Roman line closely for most of its length, which is why it runs so much straighter than the lanes around it. The A12 near Stratford St Mary picks up the southern end.
See also: which modern roads follow Roman lines, and how closely.
Where to see it
Venta Icenorum at Caistor St Edmund is the destination and it is an unusual one: the town was never built over, so the full circuit of its walls survives as earthworks in open fields, freely accessible, with the street grid showing in crop marks from the air.
Scole, where the road crossed the Waveney, produced one of the richest roadside settlement excavations in East Anglia.
Common questions
Is the A140 a Roman road?
Yes, largely. The A140 between Ipswich and Norwich follows the line of the Pye Road, the Roman route between Colchester and Venta Icenorum.
Where does the name Pye Road come from?
It is medieval and its origin is disputed. The most common reading takes it from Old English pie, the magpie, though no one has satisfactorily explained why the bird should give a road its name.