Bar Pastures, near Maxey in the lower Welland valley of Cambridgeshire, was a rural settlement occupied from the later Iron Age through the Roman period, broadly active from the 1st century BC into at least the 3rd–4th centuries AD. It formed part of the dense pattern of ditched enclosures, droveways and small farmsteads that characterise the gravel terraces of the Welland and Nene around Maxey and Etton.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
The site is one of many low-status native farmsteads in this fenland-edge landscape that continued largely uninterrupted into the Roman period, contributing to the agricultural hinterland that supplied the small town at Durobrivae (Water Newton) and the wider Nene valley pottery and salt industries. It is significant less for individual importance than as part of the well-preserved relict landscape of the Welland valley.
The site is known principally from aerial photography and cropmark survey, which reveal rectilinear enclosures, trackways and paddocks typical of the region; some limited fieldwork in the Maxey-Etton complex has produced Iron Age and Romano-British pottery, but detailed published excavation specific to Bar Pastures itself is limited.
Bar Pastures, near Maxey in the lower Welland valley of Cambridgeshire, was a rural settlement occupied from the later Iron Age through the Roman period, broadly active from the 1st century BC into at least the 3rd–4th centuries AD. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a settlement site from the Roman period in Britain.
Iron Age and Roman settlement at Bar Pastures is classified as a Roman settlement — 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 field system and drove at Pode Hole Farm (1.5 km), Roman field system and trackway with later field ditches and drove on Whittlesey Washes, 60m south of Bedford House (4.5 km), Roman drove, enclosures and building platform at Chestnut Farm (8.6 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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