Combley is a Romano-British winged-corridor villa located near Arreton on the Isle of Wight, occupied from the later 1st or 2nd century CE, with its main built phase in the late 3rd century and continuing into the 4th century. It was a modest rural establishment of the type characteristic of the Isle of Wight, likely the centre of a mixed agricultural estate exploiting the island's fertile central greensand belt.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
Combley is one of a small but significant cluster of villas on Vectis (Brading, Newport, Rock, Combley), demonstrating that the island participated fully in the villa economy of southern Britain, probably supplying grain and livestock to the mainland markets of Venta Belgarum (Winchester) and the Solent ports. Its existence underlines the prosperity and Romanisation of the island in the later Empire.
Excavations in the 1970s and 1980s by the Isle of Wight County Archaeological Unit revealed a corridor villa with projecting wings, including a bath suite with hypocaust, painted wall plaster, and a tessellated pavement; coin and pottery evidence indicates occupation into the late 4th century. Finds were comparatively modest compared with the richer Brading villa nearby, and the site has not been extensively published in monograph form.
Combley is a Romano-British winged-corridor villa located near Arreton on the Isle of Wight, occupied from the later 1st or 2nd century CE, with its main built phase in the late 3rd century and continuing into the 4th century. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a villa site from the Roman period in Britain.
Combley Roman villa 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 Newport Roman Villa (3.7 km), Carisbrooke Romano-British villa (5.2 km), Clatterford Roman Villa (5.7 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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