Silchester was a Romano-British civitas-capital of the Atrebates on the present Hampshire–Berkshire border. The site was extensively if inexpertly excavated at the end of the 19th cent. and the resulting plan of Calleva remains the most comprehensive of a western Roman provincial town. In the half-century before the Claudian invasion Silchester was the site of an important oppidum. Development after the invasion was swift, with street-grid, large central timber structures, and possibly the baths. Eventually the developed town was surrounded by a 2nd-cent. earthwork and 3rd-cent. stone defences enclosing 100 acres. At the centre was the stone-built, Hadrianic forum. Other public buildings included the baths, an earth-and-timber amphitheatre, and temples. The Victorian excavations did not examine the buildings of the earlier Roman period, but showed that by the 4th cent. much of the interior of the town was occupied by large residences, often with mosaics, with commercial premises along the main east–west street. Also dating to the 4th cent. was a small probable church south-east of the forum. Objects indicate occupation into the 5th cent., but thereafter the site was deserted.

Alan Simon Esmonde Cleary

Silchester a modern village in Hampshire, situated to the south-west of Reading, near which is the site of an important town of pre-Roman and Roman Britain, known to the Romans as Calleva Atrebatum. The site was abandoned at the end of the Roman period, and recent excavations suggest it may have been ritually cursed.