The Islip Roman villa lies on the gravel terraces east of the River Cherwell in north Oxfordshire, in a landscape densely settled during the Roman period. Like other villas of the upper Thames/Cherwell valley, it most likely originated as a modest Romano-British farmstead in the later 1st or 2nd century AD and developed into a more substantial masonry villa establishment by the 3rd–4th century, though its precise chronology is not securely published.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
The site sits within the agricultural hinterland of Alchester (a small Roman town and former fort some 8km to the east) and the wider villa-rich Cherwell valley, suggesting a working estate engaged in mixed arable and pastoral production that supplied regional markets. It is one of a scatter of villas in the parish (others are recorded near Mill Lane and Lower Park) indicating a relatively dense pattern of moderately prosperous rural estates rather than a single dominant villa.
The site is known mainly from surface scatters of Roman building debris — tile, tesserae, painted wall plaster and pottery — recovered through fieldwalking, together with cropmarks; no substantial modern excavation has been published, so the plan, size and full date range of the building remain undetermined.
The Islip Roman villa lies on the gravel terraces east of the River Cherwell in north Oxfordshire, in a landscape densely settled during the Roman period. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a villa site from the Roman period in Britain.
Islip Roman villa, 300m east of Hillside Farm 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 Romano-Celtic temple N of Woodeaton (0.7 km), Islip (0.9 km), Woodeaton (1.4 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
Aubrey Research generates detailed historical reports for any location in Britain, incorporating Roman heritage, Domesday Book records, scheduled monument data, archaeological finds and much more. Enter a nearby address to begin.
Aubrey generates in-depth historical research for any address in Britain — drawing on Roman heritage, Domesday records, scheduled monument data, archaeological finds and medieval history to reveal the complete story of a landscape.
Research the area around Islip Roman villa, 300m east of Hillside Farm