Lenthay (often Lenthay Green, near Sherborne in Dorset) was the site of a Romano-British villa active probably from the 2nd through 4th centuries AD, lying in the fertile Yeo valley within the broader villa-rich landscape of north-west Dorset. The site is best known for a substantial polychrome mosaic, indicating a residence of some pretension by the later Roman period, though the full plan of the building is poorly understood.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
The villa sits within a dense cluster of prosperous later Roman estates in the Sherborne–Yeovil area, an agriculturally rich zone tied economically to the regional centres of Lindinis (Ilchester) and Durnovaria (Dorchester). The Lenthay mosaic — depicting Apollo and Marsyas — is iconographically notable and is generally attributed to the 4th-century Durnovarian (Dorchester) school of mosaicists, linking the villa to the well-documented flourishing of mosaic production in central southern Britain.
The principal discovery, made in the 19th century, was the figural mosaic showing the musical contest of Apollo and Marsyas, which has been a key piece in studies of the Durnovarian officina by D.J. Smith and others. Beyond this pavement, structural evidence is limited, and no modern systematic excavation of the villa as a whole has been published.
Lenthay (often Lenthay Green, near Sherborne in Dorset) was the site of a Romano-British villa active probably from the 2nd through 4th centuries AD, lying in the fertile Yeo valley within the broader villa-rich landscape of north-west Dorset. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a villa site from the Roman period in Britain.
Lenthay 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 Roman villa SE of East Farm (2.8 km), Roman villa 900yds (820m) NW of parish church (2.9 km), Roman temporary camp at East Farm (3.6 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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