Northchurch Roman Villa is a ruined Roman villa at Northchurch, Hertfordshire. The site was excavated in 1973 due to new housing developments on the site.
The excavations uncovered four building phases of a large Roman country estate. First settlement remains come from the middle of the first century BC. No architectural remains were found, but pottery and other finds indicate that there was already a villa at this place. At the beginning of the first century AD, a stone building was erected. At the beginning it consisted of just four rooms with a veranda. In Phase 3 the building was enlarged and received several further rooms and most likely also a second storey. It seems that around AD 170 the villa was abandoned. In the mid third century, the villa was again occupied. In Phase 4 a bath was added on the south side of the complex. The villa was occupied till the end of the Fourth Century.
Some rooms of the villa were decorated with wall paintings. The excavator found one plaster wall fragment with the letter A and was wondering whether these were Christian painting showing once a chi-rho. Stones belonging to a mosaic were found too.
An evaluation of animals found showed that in the second century mainly sheep were kept.
The site is a scheduled monument, but it lies beneath a housing development.
David S. Neal: Northchurch, Boxmoor, and Hemel Hempstead Station: The Excavation of Three Roman Buildings in the Bulbourne Valley, in: Hertfordshire Archaeology 4 (1974), 1–135, pp. especially pages 53–110
David S. Neal, Stephen R. Coshː Roman Mosaics of Britain, Volume III: South-East Britain, Part 2, London 2009 ISBN 978-0-85431-289-4, pp. 296–298
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
Northchurch Roman Villa is a ruined Roman villa at Northchurch, Hertfordshire. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a villa site from the Roman period in Britain.
Northchurch 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 Site of Roman building, N of Berkhamsted Castle (2.1 km), Roman settlement at the Cow Roast Inn (2.3 km), Romano-British settlement and earthworks on Berkhamsted Common (2.5 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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This page covers the Roman site at Northchurch. A full Aubrey report for the area pulls together this site alongside scheduled monuments and everything else the record holds within a few miles:
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