Llantwit Major (Caer Mead) was a substantial courtyard villa in the fertile coastal lowlands of the Vale of Glamorgan, occupied from roughly the late 2nd century through the 4th century AD. It developed from a modest early structure into a major aisled-hall complex with bath suite, residential wing, and detached agricultural buildings arranged around a courtyard — among the largest and most architecturally elaborate villas known in Roman Wales.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
The villa is significant as the most fully developed Romanised rural estate in south Wales, evidence that the Vale of Glamorgan sustained a prosperous agricultural economy on the western fringe of the villa zone, likely linked to the civitas of the Silures based at Caerwent (Venta Silurum). Its scale suggests an estate of regional importance, possibly held by a wealthy Silurian aristocrat.
Excavated principally by John Storrie in the 1880s and by V.E. Nash-Williams in 1938–39, the site revealed mosaic and tessellated floors, painted wall plaster, a hypocaust system, and a bath block, along with traces of iron-working in later phases. Notably, a group of late or post-Roman burials cut into the ruins of the villa indicates continued activity or reuse of the site into the sub-Roman period, a feature of interest given Llantwit's later prominence as an early medieval monastic centre.
Llantwit Major (Caer Mead) was a substantial courtyard villa in the fertile coastal lowlands of the Vale of Glamorgan, occupied from roughly the late 2nd century through the 4th century AD. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a villa site from the Roman period in Britain.
Llantwit Major 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 ‘Bomio’ (5.9 km), Whitton Lodge Roman Villa (12.3 km), Miskin (13.7 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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