Kings Weston Roman Villa is a modest courtyard-style villa occupied from roughly the late 3rd to the late 4th century AD, situated on the slopes overlooking the Severn estuary northwest of Bristol. Two ranges of rooms were identified, one containing a small bath suite and several rooms with tessellated and patterned mosaic floors, suggesting a comfortable but not luxurious rural establishment serving a local landowning family.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
The villa is part of the dense scatter of late Roman rural estates around the lower Severn and Avon, an area linked economically to Caerwent (Venta Silurum) across the estuary and to the regional centre at Sea Mills (Abonae). It reflects the prosperity of the South Gloucestershire countryside in the 4th century, when villa-building in the region peaked.
Excavated by George Boon in 1948–50 after wartime disturbance, the site revealed two building ranges, a hypocaust, painted wall plaster, coins, and tessellated/mosaic pavements including geometric designs; one structure is preserved under a protective cover and remains visible to the public. No clear evidence of an earlier 1st–2nd century phase was recovered, suggesting the villa was a relatively late foundation on the site.
Kings Weston Roman Villa is a modest courtyard-style villa occupied from roughly the late 3rd to the late 4th century AD, situated on the slopes overlooking the Severn estuary northwest of Bristol. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a villa site from the Roman period in Britain.
Kings Weston Roman Villa 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 ‘Abone’ (1.3 km), Part of the Roman Settlement of Abonae (2.4 km), Blaise Castle, Iron Age hillfort, Roman and medieval remains, and post-medieval garden (2.6 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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