The Titsey Park villa lies on the dip slope of the North Downs in eastern Surrey, occupied from the late 1st or early 2nd century AD through to the late 4th century. It was a modest courtyard or winged-corridor villa typical of the region, set within an agricultural estate exploiting the chalk downland and Gault clay vale, and positioned close to the London–Lewes Roman road which runs through the park.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
The site is one of a string of villa estates along the foot of the North Downs (alongside Beddington, Chelsham, and Walton-on-the-Hill) supplying produce to London, and its proximity to the London–Lewes road suggests it benefited from direct access to that major route. A small Romano-Celtic temple was also identified nearby, indicating the estate had its own focus of religious activity.
First investigated by Granville Leveson-Gower in 1864 and re-excavated by the Surrey Archaeological Society in the 1990s under David Graham, the villa revealed stone footings, painted wall plaster, tessellated floors, hypocaust remains, and a detached bath-house. The associated Romano-Celtic temple, a square cella within a temenos, was excavated to its south and produced votive material including coins and brooches.
The Titsey Park villa lies on the dip slope of the North Downs in eastern Surrey, occupied from the late 1st or early 2nd century AD through to the late 4th century. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a villa site from the Roman period in Britain.
Remains of Roman villa, Titsey Park 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 Romano-Celtic temple and Roman road at Church Field, 150m north of Church Wood (1.7 km), Romano-British villa at Chelsham Court Farm (4.3 km), Lower Warbank Roman Villa (8.8 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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