Bancroft Roman villa, situated on the northern edge of modern Milton Keynes in the Ouzel valley, was a substantial winged-corridor villa occupied from the late 1st century AD through to the late 4th century. The main house developed from a modest late Iron Age and early Roman farmstead into a stone-built winged corridor villa by the 2nd century, was rebuilt on a grander scale in the 3rd–4th centuries, and included a detached bathhouse, agricultural outbuildings, a mausoleum on a nearby hilltop, and a walled garden with an ornamental fishpond.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
Bancroft is one of the most fully excavated villa estates in the south-east Midlands and offers an unusually complete picture of a prosperous middle-ranking estate operating in the hinterland of the small Roman town of Magiovinium (Fenny Stratford) and within the wider economic orbit of Verulamium. The associated circular mausoleum, which contained two lead-lined stone coffins, is particularly notable as direct evidence of the resident landowning family.
Although first investigated in 1973, the site was comprehensively excavated by the Milton Keynes Archaeology Unit between 1973 and 1986 ahead of urban development, revealing the villa plan, several geometric mosaics (including a polychrome pavement from a principal reception room), painted wall plaster, hypocausts, and large quantities of pottery, coins
Bancroft Roman villa, situated on the northern edge of modern Milton Keynes in the Ouzel valley, was a substantial winged-corridor villa occupied from the late 1st century AD through to the late 4th century. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a villa site from the Roman period in Britain.
Bancroft Roman villa is classified as a Roman villa — a civilian site in the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer. Roman Britain's archaeology encompasses thousands of sites ranging from legionary fortresses and marching camps to villas, temples and towns.
Several Roman sites lie within a short distance, including Stantonbury (2.1 km), Wolverton iron trunk aqueduct (3 km), Roman villa SE of Cosgrove Hall (3.8 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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