Newport Roman Villa, located on the Isle of Wight near the modern town of Newport, was a modest courtyard or winged-corridor villa occupied principally in the later Roman period, with main construction and occupation dating from the late 3rd to the late 4th century AD. It appears to have functioned as the residence of a working agricultural estate, exploiting the fertile valley of the River Medina, rather than as a grand display villa.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
The villa is one of several Romano-British rural establishments on the Isle of Wight (alongside Brading and Combley) that indicate the island was a productive, settled part of the civitas territory in southern Britannia, contributing agricultural surplus to the wider economy of the south coast. Unlike the more elaborate Brading villa, Newport reflects the more workaday face of villa life on the island.
Discovered in 1926 by workmen digging foundations, excavation revealed a range of at least seven or eight rooms aligned along a corridor, including a well-preserved bath suite with cold, warm and hot rooms, hypocaust pilae and traces of painted wall plaster. The site is conserved and displayed in situ under cover; finds were comparatively modest, with no elaborate figured mosaics of the Brading type, although tessellated and red tessera floors, coins and pottery typical of 3rd–4th century occupation were recovered.
Newport Roman Villa, located on the Isle of Wight near the modern town of Newport, was a modest courtyard or winged-corridor villa occupied principally in the later Roman period, with main construction and occupation dating from the late 3rd to the late 4th century 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.
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