Radwell Roman villa lies in the upper Ivel valley in north Hertfordshire, situated within the agricultural hinterland of the small Roman town at Baldock and close to Ermine Street, the major road linking London with Lincoln and York. The site appears to have been a modest rural establishment occupied during the Roman period, likely from the later 1st or 2nd century AD into the 3rd or 4th century, though precise chronology is not well established.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
Its position west of Ermine Street and within easy reach of Baldock places it among the cluster of villa estates that exploited the fertile chalk-and-gravel landscape of north Hertfordshire and supplied the local market town. Such estates formed the economic backbone of this region, which was densely settled with comparable small to middling villas (e.g. at Dicket Mead/Lockleys near Welwyn, Boxmoor, and Sandy area sites).
Little has been published in detail about Radwell specifically; the site is known principally from surface finds, cropmarks, and limited fieldwork rather than large-scale excavation, with recorded material typically including building debris (tile, tesserae, painted plaster fragments) and Romano-British pottery indicative of a masonry villa building. Beyond this, the plan, size, and full occupation sequence of the villa remain poorly defined in the public record.
Radwell Roman villa lies in the upper Ivel valley in north Hertfordshire, situated within the agricultural hinterland of the small Roman town at Baldock and close to Ermine Street, the major road linking London with Lincoln and York. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a villa site from the Roman period in Britain.
Radwell 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 Baldock (2.2 km), Hinxworth Roman fortlet (5.1 km), Lammas Field Roman villa, 680m north east of Western Bury (6.1 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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