The End of Calleva

The Ogham Stone

A Roman column reused as a property marker in the fifth century and found within the town. The stone is inscribed in Ogham script whose characters consist of horizontal lines scored in relation to a vertical axis, substituting for letters of the Latin alphabet. The language is Celtic. An otherwise unknown man called Tebicatus is commemorated.

Decline and Abandonment

Later earthworks

The course of the town's decline and eventual abandonment is difficult to trace because the early excavators were not skilled enough to recognise that process, nor the traces of the more ephemeral buildings that might have succeeded the solid masonry houses as they came to be deserted. However, the current excavation in insula IX, close to the heart of the town, has shown no evidence of abandonment before the fifth century.

This chimes with the work that has been carried out at other towns in Britain which gives us a frame-work for understanding what might have happened at Silchester. It shows that urban life throughout the island declined rapidly after 400. Even if some community survived the fifth century as the forerunner of the medieval village, Calleva cannot be regarded as a town in a Roman sense much after the middle decades of the fifth century.

Early Medieval Silchester

Amphitheatre in the mid twelfth century

We can only speculate as to why early medieval Silchester never grew to be a town as was the case with other Roman towns. One important reason will have been the emergence of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex. The influence of early Saxon settlement around the former small town of Dorchester-upon- Thames was such that by AD 635 the town had become the centre of a bishopric.

The dwindling Romano-British population of Silchester may have been responsible for defending a small enclave around the town, as evidenced, perhaps, by the earthworks which block the Roman road to Dorchester about two miles north of Calleva. By the later seventh century Winchester, only 23 miles to the south, had emerged as the principal centre of Wessex. Through evidence for the deliberate infilling of wells, the current excavations in Insula IX hint at the possibility that the end of occupation was precipitated by a deliberate abandonment.

Although Silchester is mentioned in Domesday book, the earliest physical evidence that we have of the medieval village is the parish church of St Mary, whose visible fabric dates from about the mid-twelfth century, and occupation of similar date from the amphitheatre. The arena has produced evidence of a hall building, while the crest of the seating bank, which forms an ideal basis for a defensive work, and the southern entrance provide evidence for limited fortification as a temporary stronghold. This invites identification with the Castellum de Silva (whose location is not otherwise known) which, according to a chronicle of his reign, was taken by King Stephen in 1147 during his war against Matilda.