The Broadwell Roman villa lies in the Oxfordshire Cotswolds near the parish church, in an area densely settled in the Roman period. Like other villas in this region, it was probably active from the 2nd to 4th centuries AD, functioning as the residence and working centre of a rural estate engaged in mixed agriculture, particularly grain production and sheep-rearing on the limestone uplands.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
The site forms part of the rich cluster of Cotswold villas extending along the upper Thames valley and around Cirencester (Corinium Dobunnorum), the regional civitas capital, whose prosperity in the late Roman period supported many such estates. Broadwell itself is not among the better-known or more elaborate villas of the region.
The site is recorded primarily through scatters of Roman building material, pottery, and tile observed in fieldwalking and aerial reconnaissance northwest of the church, rather than from systematic excavation. Beyond these surface indications and the general inference of a villa-type building, little specific detail of plan, mosaics, or phasing is published for this particular site.
The Broadwell Roman villa lies in the Oxfordshire Cotswolds near the parish church, in an area densely settled in the Roman period. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a villa site from the Roman period in Britain.
Broadwell Roman villa 300yds (275m) NW of church 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 Romano-British villa 350m south east of Abbotswood (2.1 km), Roman burials, medieval settlement remains and a later ditched enclosure east of St Mary's Church (3.2 km), Dorn (4.5 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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Research the area around Broadwell Roman villa 300yds (275m) NW of church