Chedworth is one of the largest and best-preserved Roman villas in Britain, set in a wooded combe in the Cotswolds near Yanworth, Gloucestershire. First built as a modest courtyard house in the early 2nd century AD, it was substantially expanded in the late 3rd and 4th centuries into a grand winged residence of around 35 rooms arranged around two courtyards, with two bath suites (one damp-heat, one dry-heat), hypocausts, and a nymphaeum enclosing a natural spring.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
Chedworth reflects the considerable wealth generated by villa estates in the Cotswolds during the 4th-century "golden age" of Romano-British rural elites, likely supported by sheep-rearing and arable farming in the territory of the Dobunni and orientated towards nearby Corinium (Cirencester). Recent finds of a high-quality mosaic dated to the mid-5th century have made the site internationally significant, suggesting continued elite occupation well after the conventional end of Roman Britain.
Excavated from 1864 after its discovery by a gamekeeper, the site has yielded fine geometric and figural mosaics (notably the dining-room mosaic with personifications of the Seasons), painted wall plaster, hypocaust systems, and Chi-Rho monograms incised on the nymphaeum's stone basin, often cited as evidence of Christian use. Excavations by the National Tr
Chedworth is one of the largest and best-preserved Roman villas in Britain, set in a wooded combe in the Cotswolds near Yanworth, Gloucestershire. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a villa site from the Roman period in Britain.
Chedworth 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 Round barrow N of Chedworth Roman villa (0.5 km), Chedworth Woods Roman temple (0.8 km), Listercombe Bottom (2.4 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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