Empingham is the site of a Romano-British villa in Rutland, occupied broadly from the 2nd to the 4th centuries AD, situated in the Gwash valley near the line of Ermine Street. Two villa complexes are actually known in the vicinity (Empingham I and II), representing modest masonry-built farmsteads with associated agricultural structures rather than grand aristocratic residences.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
The site is part of the notably dense cluster of villas and rural settlements in the limestone country of Rutland and the Welland-Gwash valleys, reflecting prosperous mixed farming on good soils close to the small town of Great Casterton and the road network linking it to the wider East Midlands. Its excavation was significant for adding detail to the picture of middling-status rural estates in the region.
Rescue excavations in the 1960s and 1970s, prompted by the construction of Rutland Water, revealed building footings, hypocaust remains, pottery, coins, and an associated Romano-British cemetery, with evidence of agricultural buildings and corn-drying facilities alongside the domestic ranges. The findings were published by Cooper and others, and the cemetery in particular has been valuable for osteological study of a rural population.
Empingham is the site of a Romano-British villa in Rutland, occupied broadly from the 2nd to the 4th centuries AD, situated in the Gwash valley near the line of Ermine Street. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a villa site from the Roman period in Britain.
Empingham 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 Great Casterton (4.7 km), Air photography site NE of village and site of Roman town (4.9 km), Roman villa east of Foster’s Bridge (5.9 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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