The Durley Hill villa at Keynsham is one of the largest Roman villas known in Britain, a substantial courtyard complex occupied principally in the late 3rd and 4th centuries AD. It lay close to the Fosse Way and the River Chew, just outside the small Roman settlement at Keynsham, and at its peak comprised multiple ranges arranged around a large courtyard, with bath suites and richly decorated reception rooms.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
The villa's scale, sculptural decoration and mosaic pavements place it among the elite estates of the lower Avon valley, on a par with sites like Box and Wellow, and suggest an owner of considerable wealth — possibly linked to administrative or landowning circles connected to nearby Bath (Aquae Sulis). It is notable for an exceptional series of carved limestone reliefs depicting mythological scenes, unusual survivals in a domestic British context.
The villa was discovered in 1922 during the creation of Durley Hill (Keynsham) cemetery and was excavated through the 1920s by Bulleid and Horne, who recorded around 40 rooms, several polychrome mosaics (including hexagonal designs), hypocaust systems, and the celebrated group of carved oolite reliefs showing figures such as Europa and the bull. Much of the site remains beneath the cemetery and has not been re-examined with modern techniques, so questions of chronology, earlier phases and the full
The Durley Hill villa at Keynsham is one of the largest Roman villas known in Britain, a substantial courtyard complex occupied principally in the late 3rd and 4th centuries AD. 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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