Watling Street
Rutupiae to Viroconium
The route
The road began at Rutupiae, the invasion beachhead at Richborough, where a great four-way triumphal arch once marked the formal entrance to the province. From there it ran west to Durovernum Cantiacorum at Canterbury, then north-west through Durobrivae at Rochester, crossing the Medway, and on over Shooter's Hill into Londinium.
North of the Thames it resumed as the great diagonal of the province. It passed Verulamium at St Albans, Durocobrivis at Dunstable, Lactodorum at Towcester and reached Venonis at High Cross in Leicestershire, where it crossed the Fosse Way at a near-perfect right angle. Beyond that it ran through Letocetum at Wall in Staffordshire and finished at Viroconium Cornoviorum at Wroxeter, for a time the fourth largest town in Roman Britain.
The surveyed line
- Mapped length
- 350 km
- Mapped segments
- 58
- Line certainty
- Conjectured
Measured across every Itiner-e segment attributed to this road. A conjectured stretch is one whose course is inferred from evidence either side of it; that covers 99% of the mapped length here. This describes how precisely the line is known, not whether the road existed.
The road today
Watling Street is the most completely surviving of all Britain's Roman roads. The A2 carries its line from Dover through Canterbury to London. In the capital the road is still legible in the street plan: Edgware Road running north-west from Marble Arch is Watling Street, and the name persists on signposts in Bexleyheath and Radlett.
North-west of London the A5 follows the Roman surveying so closely that for long stretches the modern carriageway sits within a few metres of the original line. The M1 was built to relieve it, not to replace it. Where the A5 runs dead straight for miles across Northamptonshire and Warwickshire, that is Roman work.
See also: which modern roads follow Roman lines, and how closely.
Where to see it
Letocetum at Wall, near Lichfield, is the best single stop: National Trust land in English Heritage guardianship, with the excavated remains of a Roman bath house and mansio sitting directly on the road. Verulamium park at St Albans has the town walls and a mosaic and hypocaust in situ; the Roman theatre, the only one visible in Britain, is just outside the park on the Gorhambury Estate and charges separately.
For the road itself, the stretch of the A5 between Towcester and High Cross is the classic drive. At High Cross a battered eighteenth-century monument marks the crossing with the Fosse Way, traditionally called the centre of Roman Britain.
Common questions
Is the A5 a Roman road?
Largely, yes. From London to Shrewsbury the A5 follows the line of Watling Street, in many places within a few metres of the original Roman surveying. The road was not built by the Romans in its present form, but the route it takes is theirs.
Is the A2 a Roman road?
Yes. The A2 between Dover and London follows the Kentish half of Watling Street, the road that carried traffic from the Channel ports to the provincial capital.
Why is it called Watling Street?
The name is Old English, not Latin. The Wæclingas were the people settled around St Albans, which the Anglo-Saxons called Wæclingaceaster. The road that passed through their territory became Wæclinga stræt, and the name later spread along its whole length.
Where did Watling Street start and end?
It ran from Rutupiae at Richborough on the Kent coast to Viroconium at Wroxeter in Shropshire, crossing Britain at close to its widest reach and passing through Londinium on the way.