Radford Semele is the site of a Romano-British villa located on the south-eastern outskirts of Leamington Spa in Warwickshire, in the valley of the River Leam. Like other villas of the Warwickshire Avon corridor, it is likely to have been a modest agricultural establishment occupied between the 2nd and 4th centuries AD, exploiting the fertile mixed-farming land of the region.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
The villa sits within a dispersed pattern of small to middling rural estates in the territory probably administered from Alcester (Alauna) or via the Fosse Way corridor, contributing to the agrarian economy that supplied nearby small towns and military demand further north. It is not a high-status site comparable to Chedworth or Great Witcombe, but rather typical of the second-tier estates that dominated this part of the civilian zone.
The site has produced Roman building debris, tile, and pottery scatters, with masonry footings noted in antiquarian and later observations, but it has not been the subject of extensive modern excavation, and its plan, full chronology, and economic basis remain poorly defined. Its inclusion in the Barrington Atlas rests on this material evidence for substantial Roman occupation rather than on detailed structural knowledge.
Radford Semele is the site of a Romano-British villa located on the south-eastern outskirts of Leamington Spa in Warwickshire, in the valley of the River Leam. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a villa site from the Roman period in Britain.
Radford Semele 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 Chesterton-on-Fosse (4.8 km), Roman villa and medieval settlement remains immediately north of Ewefields Farm (6.1 km), Long Itchington (7 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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