Combe St. Nicholas is the site of a Romano-British villa located in the Blackdown Hills of south Somerset, near the modern village of the same name. Like many villas in this part of the civitas Durotrigum, it likely originated in the later 2nd or 3rd century AD and reached its developed form in the 3rd–4th centuries, a period of marked rural prosperity in the South West.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
The villa formed part of a notably dense cluster of rural estates in eastern Devon and south Somerset (including Holcombe, Seaton, Whitestaunton, and Wadeford), exploiting the agricultural potential of the river valleys draining the Blackdowns. Its position is also relevant to the regional economy of the Mendip lead/silver industry and the late Roman markets at Ilchester (Lindinis).
A tessellated pavement was recorded at Combe St. Nicholas in the 19th century, and the site is known principally from such antiquarian discoveries and surface finds rather than modern systematic excavation. Beyond the evidence for mosaic or tessellated flooring indicative of a building of some pretension, little detailed structural or chronological information has been published.
Combe St. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a villa site from the Roman period in Britain.
Combe St. Nicholas 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 Wadeford Roman villa (1.1 km), White Staunton (2.2 km), Roman villa N of Whitestaunton (2.3 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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