Oldcoates lies in north Nottinghamshire near the Yorkshire border, in a zone of small Romano-British rural settlements east of the Roman road network linking Doncaster (Danum) and Lincoln (Lindum). The site is identified as a villa or villa-like farmstead, likely active in the 2nd–4th centuries AD, though its specific plan, scale, and occupation span are not well established in the published record.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
The site fits within a dispersed pattern of modest villas and farmsteads on the fertile margins of the Sherwood sandstones and the Idle valley, contributing to agricultural production supplying the military and urban markets of the lower Don and Trent. It is not a notably grand establishment compared with the more elaborate villas of the Trent valley or the Lincolnshire Wolds.
Knowledge of Oldcoates derives primarily from surface finds, antiquarian reports, and cropmark/fieldwalking evidence — including Roman pottery and building debris (tile, possibly tesserae) — rather than from systematic modern excavation, and little has been formally published. The character of the structures, whether a winged-corridor villa or a simpler aisled building typical of the region, remains undetermined on present evidence.
Oldcoates lies in north Nottinghamshire near the Yorkshire border, in a zone of small Romano-British rural settlements east of the Roman road network linking Doncaster (Danum) and Lincoln (Lindum). It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a villa site from the Roman period in Britain.
Oldcoates 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 at Oldcoates (0.3 km), Stancil Roman villa (7.5 km), Roman fort and a section of Roman road 350m north west of Holly House Farm (8.1 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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