The Stonesfield villa, in west Oxfordshire near the river Evenlode, was a substantial Romano-British country house active principally in the 2nd to 4th centuries AD. It is best known for an exceptional mosaic pavement uncovered in 1712, depicting Bacchus on a panther within an elaborate geometric frame, indicating a high-status reception or dining room (likely a triclinium) within a winged-corridor villa.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
Stonesfield lay within the prosperous villa belt of the upper Thames/Cotswold fringe, an agriculturally rich zone supplying the civitas of the Dobunni and the small town at Akeman Street, and its quality of decoration places it among the better-appointed villas of the region alongside North Leigh and Ditchley nearby. The 1712 discovery was also influential historically as one of the earliest recorded Roman mosaics in Britain, prompting antiquarian engravings by Hearne and others.
Apart from the Bacchus mosaic (subsequently destroyed) and a second pavement found in 1779, both recorded only through antiquarian drawings, little of the villa's plan is securely known; modern fieldwork has been limited, and surface finds and aerial evidence suggest a courtyard or corridor villa with associated outbuildings, but no comprehensive excavation has taken place.
The Stonesfield villa, in west Oxfordshire near the river Evenlode, was a substantial Romano-British country house active principally in the 2nd to 4th centuries AD. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a villa site from the Roman period in Britain.
Stonesfield 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 Stonesfield Roman villa (0.6 km), Oaklands Farm Roman villa (1.5 km), North Leigh (1.7 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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