This site, located in the vicinity of the Blackwater estuary in Essex (the coordinates fall near Tolleshunt or Tiptree), is recorded as a Roman-period round building of civilian character. Round structures in Roman Britain typically continued an indigenous Iron Age architectural tradition into the 1st–3rd centuries AD, often as ancillary buildings within farmsteads or as small rural shrines. Without more specific dating evidence for this particular site, an active range somewhere within the 1st–3rd century AD is most plausible.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
Round buildings in lowland Roman Britain are significant as markers of native architectural continuity within an otherwise Romanising rural landscape, suggesting either a conservative farmstead, an outbuilding (granary, byre, or workshop) on a rectilinear villa-style site, or a possible rural cult focus. In the Essex coastal zone — a region of small farms, saltworking (red hills), and modest villas — such a structure would fit a pattern of locally-rooted rural production.
Very little detailed published information appears to be recorded for this specific site beyond its identification as a Roman round building of civilian type, and no excavation report or finds assemblage is securely associated with it in the standard accessible record. Comparable Essex round buildings (e.g. at Stansted, Great Holts Farm, and Slough House Farm) have yielded post-rings or ring-gullies, coarseware pottery
This site, located in the vicinity of the Blackwater estuary in Essex (the coordinates fall near Tolleshunt or Tiptree), is recorded as a Roman-period round building of civilian character. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a site site from the Roman period in Britain.
Roman round building is classified as a Roman site — 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 Mersea Mount: a Roman barrow at Barrow Hill Farm (2.2 km), Roman saltern 750m north west of Maydays Farm (3.2 km), Othona (4.8 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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