Via Devana

Via Devana is the modern name given to a road that may never have existed as a single Roman route. The eighteenth-century antiquary Charles Mason coined the term for a supposed road running diagonally from Camulodunum at Colchester through Cambridge to Deva at Chester, the legionary fortress on the Dee. Stretches of Roman road certainly exist along that line, particularly between Colchester and Cambridge, but whether they ever connected as one continuous highway is disputed. The Cambridge to Godmanchester section survives clearly. West of that, the Via Devana is more a Georgian idea than a Roman fact.