The Roughground Farm villa lay on the gravel terraces of the upper Thames just north of Lechlade, occupied from the late 1st century AD through to the late 4th century. It developed from a modest late Iron Age/early Roman farmstead into a substantial winged-corridor villa with associated agricultural buildings, set within a wider landscape of paddocks, droveways and arable fields characteristic of the Cotswold villa belt.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
The site represents the productive agrarian core of the prosperous upper Thames/Cotswold region, where villa estates supplied grain and livestock to nearby towns such as Cirencester (Corinium) and Dorchester-on-Thames. Its long occupation and progressive enlargement illustrate the gradual Romanisation of a native rural settlement into a fully developed villa establishment.
Margaret Jones's 1957–9 excavations revealed parts of the main range, including walled rooms, hypocaust elements and tessellated/mosaic floors, while Tim Allen's 1981–2 work for the Oxford Archaeological Unit (published 1993) exposed the wider farmstead, ancillary stone buildings, corn-driers, wells and an extensive field system, alongside Iron Age precursors. Finds included painted wall plaster, coins, pottery and agricultural equipment, confirming both domestic comfort in
The Roughground Farm villa lay on the gravel terraces of the upper Thames just north of Lechlade, occupied from the late 1st century AD through to the late 4th century. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a villa site from the Roman period in Britain.
Lechlade 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 Great Lemhill Farm Roman villa (1.7 km), Leaze Farm (3.2 km), Iron Age and Romano British settlement remains and associated features, 1km south east of Leaze Farm (3.4 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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