Stonea, in the Cambridgeshire Fens near March, comprises two related but distinct sites: the Iron Age hill fort known as Stonea Camp (occupied from c. 500 BCE and possibly the site of a battle against Roman forces under Publius Ostorius Scapula c. 47 CE), and the adjacent Romano-British settlement at Stonea Grange, which flourished from the late 1st through the 4th century CE. The latter centred on an unusual, monumental stone-and-tile tower-like building erected in the Hadrianic period (c. 130 CE), set within a planned grid of streets, surrounded by timber buildings, enclosures, and a small temple precinct.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
Stonea Grange is widely interpreted as an imperial administrative centre — possibly the seat of a procuratorial estate (a saltus) overseeing Crown-owned Fenland reclaimed and drained under Hadrian, making it one of the few sites in Britain identifiable as a direct instrument of imperial economic management. The deliberate dismantling of the tower by the later 2nd century suggests the experiment was short-lived, though occupation continued more modestly thereafter.
Excavations by the British Museum under T. W. Potter (1980–1984) revealed the foundations of the masonry tower (with hypocaust fragments, painted plaster, and window glass indicating multiple storeys), a planned street grid, a small temple yiel
Stonea, in the Cambridgeshire Fens near March, comprises two related but distinct sites: the Iron Age hill fort known as Stonea Camp (occupied from c. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a settlement site from the Roman period in Britain.
Stonea 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 Bowl barrow and Romano-British enclosure 430m south west of Earls Fen Farm (1.9 km), Wimblington (4 km), Grandford (8.5 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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