Newport Roman Villa was a Romano-British farmhouse constructed in 280 AD. It is located near to Newport, Isle of Wight.
Newport Roman Villa was unearthed in 1926 when garage foundations were laid by a nearby homeowner. The site was excavated and the ground plan of the villa house was uncovered.
In 1926 the Mayor of Newport, Alderman John Curtis Millgate , proposed that the Newport Town Council accept the site of the Roman Villa and erect a building over the villa to preserve it. After reviewing the suggestion and considering the costs involved, the town council (under a new mayor), declined the offer due to the costs involved.
Alderman Millgate decided to purchase the site himself and constructed a structure over the villa. Following his death in 1956, the site passed into the ownership of his daughter, Grace Millgate. In 1960, when the building needed a fair amount of repair, Miss Millgate offered the site to Newport Town Council, however it was again declined.
The Isle of Wight County Council agreed to accept the gift of the site from Miss Millgate in December 1960 and the deeds were handed over in April 1961.
Newport Roman Villa was constructed in about 280 AD with local stone including flint, chalk, limestone and greensand with the walls remaining almost at their original height. The building was roofed with massive slabs of Bembridge limestone which needed large roof timbers to support them. Many of these roof slabs had a distinctive shape, pierced with a single hole to take a nail, were found on the site. It is likely the building was the centre of a wealthy estate.
The discovery of fragments of window glass on the site shows that the building had some glazed windows, and remains of painted wall plaster during excavation show that at least some of the rooms had brightly coloured interior walls.
It features a well-preserved Roman bath suite with hypocaust underfloor heating. The furnace for heating the bath suite was outside the back wall of the villa at the end of the bath wing, and a slave would have been responsible for providing it with fuel. The hot air from the furnace passed through an arch at the base of the villa's back wall and circulated under the raised floors of the three rooms.
It remains unknown when life at the villa ended. During excavation, the skull of a woman in her early thirties was found in the corner of one of the rooms. It has been suggested that she was killed during a raid in an abandoned building. However it is also viewed that the abandonment of the island's villas by the middle of the fourth century could be due to economic hardship rather than the threat of attacks by Anglo-saxon raiders.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
Newport Roman Villa was a Romano-British farmhouse constructed in 280 AD. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a villa site from the Roman period in Britain.
Newport 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 Carisbrooke Romano-British villa (1.7 km), Clatterford Roman Villa (2.3 km), Combley Roman villa (3.7 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
Aubrey Research generates detailed historical reports for any location in Britain, incorporating Roman heritage, Domesday Book records, scheduled monument data, archaeological finds and much more. Enter a nearby address to begin.
This page covers the Roman site at Newport Roman Villa. A full Aubrey report for the area pulls together this site alongside scheduled monuments and everything else the record holds within a few miles:
Every location is different. Not every section appears for every place, only what the historical record actually holds turns up in a report.
Aubrey generates in-depth historical research for any address in Britain, drawing on Roman heritage, Domesday records, scheduled monument data and medieval history to reveal the complete story of a landscape.
Research the area around Newport Roman Villa