Holcombe is a Romano-British villa in east Devon, near Uplyme on the Devon-Dorset border, occupied from the late 1st through the 4th century AD. It developed from a modest timber and stone farmstead into a more elaborate winged-corridor villa with a detached bath-house, reflecting the gradual aggrandisement typical of southwestern villas in the later Roman period.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
The site sits within the relatively thinly-villa'd landscape of Devon, on the western fringe of the more prosperous Dorset villa zone, and is best known for producing the Holcombe Mirror — a finely decorated Iron Age bronze mirror found in a Roman context, indicating continuity from a pre-Roman elite presence on the site.
Excavations in the 1960s–70s (notably by Pollard) revealed successive building phases including an octagonal bath-house added in the 4th century, along with the celebrated La Tène III bronze mirror recovered from a pit. Finds otherwise are consistent with a working agricultural estate: coarse pottery, coins, and structural remains, though no major mosaics are recorded.
Holcombe is a Romano-British villa in east Devon, near Uplyme on the Devon-Dorset border, occupied from the late 1st through the 4th century AD. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a villa site from the Roman period in Britain.
Holcombe 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 villa 300yds (270m) SSW of Holcombe Farm (1.8 km), Moridunum (4 km), Seaton (6.5 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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