West Blatchington, on the northern edge of modern Hove, was a Romano-British farmstead occupied from the later 1st through the 4th century AD, with its principal phase—an aisled building of roughly 35 x 15 m—dating to the 3rd century. The site is best understood as a working agricultural establishment rather than a high-status villa, set within the chalk downland of the South Downs where mixed arable and pastoral farming dominated.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
It is one of a cluster of downland farms supplying grain and other produce in the hinterland of Novus Portus (the Sussex coastal zone around Brighton/Hove), and its corn-drying installations make it a useful indicator of the economic intensification of cereal production in 3rd–4th century Sussex. The site is particularly notable for the unusually large number of corn-drying ovens recovered, suggesting either bulk processing for market or possibly a role in supply networks.
Excavations by Norman Norris in the late 1940s, prompted by housing development, revealed the aisled building together with several corn-drying ovens, a well, enclosure ditches, and associated pottery and coins indicating activity into the 4th century. Finds included quernstones and agricultural equipment consistent with a cereal-processing function; no mosaics, hypocausts, or other indicators of elite residential display were identified, reinforcing its interpretation as a working farm rather than a villa in the architectural sense.
West Blatchington, on the northern edge of modern Hove, was a Romano-British farmstead occupied from the later 1st through the 4th century AD, with its principal phase—an aisled building of roughly 35 x 15 m—dating to the 3rd century. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a villa site from the Roman period in Britain.
West Blatchington 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 Romano-British villa at Manor Hall Road, Southwick (3.9 km), Hillfort, the possible remains of a Romano-Celtic temple and a group of three bowl barrows at Hollingbury (4.2 km), Southwick (4.3 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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