A large and elaborate villa, consisting of three corridors round a courtyard. The site is 209 ft by 202 ft, and is now underlying the cemetery and road embankment. Excavated 1922- 4. Well-preserved mosaics were visible at the time of excavation. After the walls and tessellated pavements were plotted by Bullied and Horne, they were removed. Coins from Victorinus (265) to Valentinian (364-375) support a 3rd-4th C date. The land was purchased in 1875 to enable a cemetery to be created here. Whilst a chapel was being erected in the centre of the site, the builders broke through a fine pavement; however, the site continued to be subject to "a steady destruction" for over 40 years, with graves driven through tessellated floors and walls being pulled out. Horne noticed that the gravedigger was removing a flight of steps in June 1921; he ensured that this area was preserved from further digging, and obtained permission to excavate the open spaces not occupied by graves. The work was directed by Arthur Bulleid. A large Roman house was uncovered during the summers of 1922 and 1923. A corridor runs E to W, measuring 212 feet long and 10 feet wide; the E end had been destroyed but another corridor was seen to join it at the W end, passing S under the modern high road and into the field beyond, where trial holes show it continues. The pavement was of a guilloche and key fret patterns in red, white and blue tesserae. The remains of 13 rooms were also uncovered, some retaining their tessellated floors. One room had been almost completely destroyed by the construction of the chapel, although some of the floor remains in situ outside. A hexagonal room with a geometrical pavement was roofed in a single span in tufa blocks; one of the adjoining rooms included a hypocaust. The recovered pottery did not include much Samian, although one fragment included the potter's name BELATULLUS. Another fragment of a circular dish of coase black ware is inscribed UNICA. Other finds includes bronze ornaments and a barbed bronze fish hook, ivory pins, and crucibles and moulds for casting small ornaments.Around fifty bronze coins date from the middle 3rd Century. A fragmentary part of the villa is exposed in the cemetery. It consists of a small irregular room with stone walling 1m high. At this site there are also pieces of columns and stone drainage channeling. A part of a tessellated floor is said to survive under the chapel. All the remaining finds are to be found in the museum. This includes stonework, pillars, a table leg and a small amount of bronze work.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
A large and elaborate villa, consisting of three corridors round a courtyard. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a villa site from the Roman period in Britain.
Durley Hill 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 Settlement at Keynsham Hams, former Cadbury's Factory (0.9 km), Keynsham (1 km), Brislington Roman villa (3.4 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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