15/06/2026
I've been walking the same two miles of ancient Roman wall since I was a boy.
For more than fifty years, Calleva Atrebatum — the Roman town buried beneath the fields of Silchester in North Hampshire — has been part of my life. A playground when I was young. A place for quiet and contemplation as I got older. And for the last four or five years, somewhere I've been returning to before sunrise, in every weather a Hampshire year can produce, with film and digital cameras.
The result is my new book — CALLEVA: A Year Inside the Walls.
link in comments
It isn't a history of the site. It's a photographer's field notes from twelve months inside one of Britain's best-preserved Roman town circuits. January frost on two-thousand-year-old flint. Elder in flower above the wall in June. The buried street plan pressing through dry July grass. October mist. November bare walls. The mistle thrush singing from the churchyard yew.
Illustrated throughout with film and digital photography — colour and black and white — and woven with the natural history and folklore of the plants and trees that have made the walls their home since the Romans left.
Available now in paperback on Amazon UK. The link is in my bio, or search CALLEVA: A Year Inside the Walls.
If Silchester, Roman Britain, or the quiet Hampshire countryside means something to you — I hope this book does too.
