The Roman villa north of Whitestaunton lies on the Somerset-Devon border in the Blackdown Hills, on a south-facing slope near a spring later associated with St Agnes's Well. Excavations in the late 19th and early 20th centuries revealed a modest courtyard or winged-corridor villa with bath suite, likely occupied from the 2nd through 4th centuries AD, consistent with the wider pattern of villa development in the Somerset/east Devon hinterland.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
It represents one of the more westerly villa estates in the rural economy of Roman Britain, lying on the fringe of the densely villa'd Somerset region and well placed to exploit mixed agriculture on the Blackdown slopes. Its proximity to a perennial spring may indicate a minor cult focus alongside the domestic complex, a combination paralleled at other South-Western villas.
Investigations by Aston and Pring in 1882 and subsequent early 20th-century work uncovered walls, hypocaust elements, a small bath suite, tessellated pavements, painted wall plaster, coins and pottery, but the records are limited by Victorian excavation standards and no comprehensive modern excavation has been published. The site remains poorly characterised in plan, and finer chronology, full extent, and any associated agricultural buildings are not securely known.
The Roman villa north of Whitestaunton lies on the Somerset-Devon border in the Blackdown Hills, on a south-facing slope near a spring later associated with St Agnes's Well. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a villa site from the Roman period in Britain.
Roman villa N of Whitestaunton 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 White Staunton (0.2 km), Combe St. Nicholas (2.3 km), Wadeford Roman villa (2.9 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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