Kingscote was a substantial Romano-British rural settlement in the Cotswolds, occupied from the later 1st century AD through to the late 4th century, with peak activity in the 2nd–4th centuries. Spread over some 30+ hectares, it was an unwalled "small town" or large village (a vicus-like agglomeration), comprising multiple stone-built ranges, courtyard buildings, and possible villa-like structures along a network of trackways.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
The settlement lay within the agriculturally rich villa-belt around Cirencester (Corinium Dobunnorum), the regional capital, and likely functioned as a market and craft centre serving the surrounding estates; its scale places it among the more important nucleated rural sites of the Dobunnic territory. It is notable for the wealth and status of some of its buildings, suggesting more than purely peasant occupation.
Excavations from the 1970s onwards (notably by E. J. Swain and later by Tim Copeland and the Kingscote Archaeological Association) revealed multiple stone buildings, hypocausts, painted wall plaster, and a remarkable figured wall painting featuring Venus or a similar mythological scene, along with substantial assemblages of coins, pottery, and metalwork. Geophysical survey has mapped an extensive plan of streets and enclosures, though only a fraction of the site has been excavated.
Kingscote was a substantial Romano-British rural settlement in the Cotswolds, occupied from the later 1st century AD through to the late 4th century, with peak activity in the 2nd–4th centuries. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a settlement site from the Roman period in Britain.
Kingscote 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 The Chessalls Roman town (1.1 km), Uley (4.3 km), Romano-British farmstead 200m south west of Longman's Barn Farm (5.7 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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