Scole was a substantial Romano-British roadside settlement straddling the River Waveney on the line of the Pye Road (the Roman road from Colchester to Caistor St Edmund/*Venta Icenorum*), at the modern Norfolk–Suffolk border. Occupation ran from the mid-1st century AD into the 4th century, with the settlement reaching its peak in the 2nd and 3rd centuries; it has been characterised as a small town or "minor town" of perhaps 30+ hectares, with timber buildings, yards and industrial activity strung along the road.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
Scole functioned as a roadside service centre and probable mansio-stage between Colchester (*Camulodunum*) and Caistor, controlling a major river crossing and serving as a local market and craft-production node in the territory of the Iceni. Its waterlogged deposits along the Waveney make it one of the more environmentally informative small towns in East Anglia.
Excavations from the 1970s (Rogerson 1977) through the major Scole–Dickleburgh fieldwork ahead of the A140 bypass (published by Ashwin and Tester, 2014) revealed timber-framed buildings, wells, a possible bridge or timber causeway over the Waveney, leatherworking debris, bone and woodwork preserved in anaerobic conditions, pottery kilns in the vicinity, and substantial finds of coinage and metalw
Scole was a substantial Romano-British roadside settlement straddling the River Waveney on the line of the Pye Road (the Roman road from Colchester to Caistor St Edmund/*Venta Icenorum*), at the modern Norfolk–Suffolk border. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a settlement site from the Roman period in Britain.
Scole is classified as a Roman settlement — 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 Scole Roman settlement (0.4 km), Stonham Aspal (19.4 km), Roman villa at Stanton Clair (19.9 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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