Barnsley Park is a Romano-British villa in the Cotswolds, near Cirencester (Roman Corinium), occupied from the mid-second century into the late fourth or early fifth century. It began as a modest timber farmstead and developed into a substantial stone-built winged-corridor villa with associated agricultural buildings, set within a managed estate landscape of fields, paddocks and trackways.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
The site lies in one of the densest villa landscapes in Roman Britain, in the hinterland of Corinium, and is significant for the unusually clear evidence it preserves for the agricultural infrastructure surrounding a villa — not just the residence but the working estate. Its prolonged late-Roman occupation and possible post-Roman activity make it important for debates on the end of villa economies in western Britain.
Excavations by Graham Webster and later by Richard Reece and others from the 1960s through 1980s revealed the main villa building, ancillary structures including a probable aisled building and corn-drying ovens, and an extensive surrounding field system traceable as earthworks. Finds included pottery, coins running well into the late fourth century, and structural evidence interpreted by the excavators as indicating continued use or squatter occupation after the conventional villa phase had ended.
Barnsley Park is a Romano-British villa in the Cotswolds, near Cirencester (Roman Corinium), occupied from the mid-second century into the late fourth or early fifth century. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a villa site from the Roman period in Britain.
Barnsley Park 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 Roman villa and associated field system, Barnsley Park (1.3 km), Roman villa and earlier settlement remains 1120m east of Harnhill Manor (4.6 km), Bibury Roman villa near Bibury Mill (4.8 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
Aubrey Research generates detailed historical reports for any location in Britain, incorporating Roman heritage, Domesday Book records, scheduled monument data, archaeological finds and much more. Enter a nearby address to begin.
Aubrey generates in-depth historical research for any address in Britain — drawing on Roman heritage, Domesday records, scheduled monument data, archaeological finds and medieval history to reveal the complete story of a landscape.
Research the area around Barnsley Park