The Box villa, located in the village of Box in west Wiltshire near the Somerset border, was a substantial Romano-British villa complex occupied from at least the 2nd through the 4th centuries AD. It developed into one of the larger courtyard villas of the region, with multiple ranges, mosaic-floored rooms, and a bath suite, sitting within the prosperous villa landscape east of Aquae Sulis (Bath).
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
Box lies in the agriculturally rich Avon valley hinterland of Bath, an area dense with high-status villas (e.g. Atworth, Combe Down, Bradford-on-Avon) that likely supplied the town and exploited the local Bath stone quarries — the Box quarries themselves were worked in the Roman period, and the villa may be linked to estate ownership tied to that industry as well as mixed farming.
The villa was identified beneath and around the parish church and Selwyn Hall, with antiquarian and 20th-century investigations (notably by Hurst and later by Brakspear) recording walls, hypocausts, painted wall plaster, and several mosaic pavements; the full plan, however, remains only partially understood as much of the site lies under the modern village.
The Box villa, located in the village of Box in west Wiltshire near the Somerset border, was a substantial Romano-British villa complex occupied from at least the 2nd through the 4th centuries AD. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a villa site from the Roman period in Britain.
Box 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 500m south east of Hill House Farm (0.4 km), Colerne (3.5 km), Bradford-on-Avon Roman Villa (7.3 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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