The Roman villa at Castle Copse, near Great Bedwyn in eastern Wiltshire, was a substantial rural complex occupied from the later 1st century AD through to the late 4th or early 5th century. It developed from modest early origins into a large courtyard villa during the 3rd and 4th centuries, with a major aisled hall building forming its principal residential and reception structure.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
The villa lay within the prosperous agricultural hinterland of Cunetio (Mildenhall) and the Kennet valley, an area dense with high-status late Roman villas; its scale and the quality of its appointments place it among the more important rural establishments of the region, likely the centre of a sizeable working estate.
The site was investigated by Eric Hostetter and Thomas Howe in the 1980s (published as *The Romano-British Villa at Castle Copse, Great Bedwyn*, 1997), revealing the aisled building, mosaics, painted wall plaster, hypocaust heating, and finds spanning the full Roman period, set within an earlier Iron Age hillfort enclosure that conditioned the villa's layout.
The Roman villa at Castle Copse, near Great Bedwyn in eastern Wiltshire, was a substantial rural complex occupied from the later 1st century AD through to the late 4th or early 5th century. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a villa site from the Roman period in Britain.
Roman villa in Castle Copse 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 Bedwyn (1.7 km), Romano-British kilns 150yds (135m) SSW of Tottenham House (3.7 km), Romano-British kilns, Column Ride, Savernake Forest (6.5 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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Research the area around Roman villa in Castle Copse