Green Ore was a Roman lead-working settlement on the Mendip plateau, situated a few kilometres north-east of the major imperial lead-silver mining centre at Charterhouse-on-Mendip. Excavations at Rookery Farm in the 1950s revealed evidence of smelting and ingot production, with activity likely spanning the later 1st to 3rd centuries AD, consistent with broader Mendip lead exploitation that began under Claudius and Nero.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
The site is best known for the discovery of four inscribed lead ingots (pigs), stamped with imperial titulature, which place Green Ore firmly within the regulated state-controlled extraction of Mendip lead and argentiferous silver — a key economic resource of Britannia exported across the western provinces. Its existence demonstrates that lead processing on Mendip was not confined to Charterhouse but was dispersed across satellite working sites.
The 1950s excavations recovered the cache of four lead pigs along with traces of buildings, hearths and slag indicating on-site smelting; the ingots bear stamps datable to the later 2nd century. Beyond this assemblage and limited associated structural evidence, the settlement remains poorly understood, with no major modern excavation having tested its full extent or chronology.
Green Ore was a Roman lead-working settlement on the Mendip plateau, situated a few kilometres north-east of the major imperial lead-silver mining centre at Charterhouse-on-Mendip. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a production site site from the Roman period in Britain.
Green Ore is classified as a Roman production site — 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 Priddy (4.4 km), Ischalis? (8.5 km), Roman settlement at Town Field (8.8 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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