Lidgate is the site of a Romano-British villa in southwest Suffolk, on the chalk uplands near the Cambridgeshire border, occupied broadly during the 2nd–4th centuries AD. It appears to have been a modest rural establishment of the type common across the East Anglian chalk and clay landscape, rather than a grand aisled or courtyard villa.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
The villa sat within the productive agricultural hinterland of the civitas of the Iceni and lay close to the line of the Icknield Way, linking it to wider regional markets. It is one of a scatter of villa sites in this part of Suffolk that demonstrate the gradual Romanisation of the rural elite in a region long thought to have been relatively villa-poor.
Evidence has come principally from surface finds, cropmarks and limited fieldwork rather than full excavation, with recovery of building material (tile, tesserae), pottery and coins indicating a substantial masonry structure. No detailed published excavation plan is available, and the precise extent and phasing of the building remain poorly defined.
Lidgate is the site of a Romano-British villa in southwest Suffolk, on the chalk uplands near the Cambridgeshire border, occupied broadly during the 2nd–4th centuries AD. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a villa site from the Roman period in Britain.
Lidgate 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 Lidgate (1.1 km), Roman settlement NW of Cotton Hall (12.2 km), Exning (13.1 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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