Frocester Court is a Romano-British villa situated on the low-lying clay vale beneath the Cotswold scarp, occupied from the late first century A.D. through to the very late fifth or early sixth century — making it one of the latest-occupied villas in Britain. It developed from a modest timber farmstead into a substantial winged corridor villa of stone in the third and fourth centuries, with the main range fronted by a long gravelled courtyard and flanked by agricultural buildings.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
Frocester is significant as a productive agricultural estate within the wealthy villa-dense hinterland of *Glevum* (Gloucester) and *Corinium* (Cirencester), and especially for the evidence it provides for sub-Roman continuity: structural use, occupation deposits and reuse of building fabric demonstrably continued well after the conventional 410 horizon, making it a key site in debates about the survival of villa-based economies into the post-Roman period.
Excavated extensively by Eddie Price over several decades (published in two major volumes, 2000 and 2010), the site yielded a detailed stratified sequence including mosaics, painted plaster, corn-driers, hearths cut into mosaic floors in the latest phases, and a large assemblage of late Roman and sub-Roman pottery and metalwork. The surrounding field system, droveways and Iron Age antecedents were also traced, giving an unusually complete picture of long-term landscape use
Frocester Court is a Romano-British villa situated on the low-lying clay vale beneath the Cotswold scarp, occupied from the late first century A.D. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a villa site from the Roman period in Britain.
Frocester 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 Uley (3.6 km), Woodchester (5.4 km), The Chessalls Roman town (7.3 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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