Broadcast 17 April 2011

In the early 19th century the antiquarian Edmund Tyrell Artis came across the remains of a Roman site in the woods near Peterborough. He claimed to have found Roman statues, buildings and burials, surrounded by evidence for ironworking, but he only ever published drawings and a map, and over time his site was lost, until being rediscovered in 2005 by the Forestry Commission.

An earthwork survey and evaluation trenches by Northamptonshire Archaeology (NA) identified a range of buildings and a possible courtyard (interpreted as a courtyard villa), a series of large quarry pits, and an enclosure with evidence of ironworking.

Time Team aimed to follow up NA’s findings with further trenches. The range of buildings turned out to be fairly basic and utilitarian in nature – no sign here of painted wall plaster or other ‘high status’ elements. However, a raised platform in the south-east corner of the courtyard produced not just painted plaster but also box flue tiles from a possible hypocaust system; this may have been the site of the villa’s bath-house.

The enclosure to the west of the villa was confirmed as being industrial in nature, by the identification of an iron ore-roasting floor. A trench through one of the quarry pits found evidence of iron ore extraction, the disused quarry being subsequently used as a dump for domestic waste from the villa.

Gallery

Click to view a larger version of each photo with description.

[flickr-photoset:id=72157626503289552,size=s]

Broadcast 31 October 2010

The ‘Litlington villa’ is an antiquarian puzzle which Time Team hoped to solve. In 1829 the Reverend W. Clack, a respected Cambridgeshire antiquarian, began his investigations in the village of Litlington. Twelve years later he presented the results of his labours to the local community – a huge, 30-roomed Roman villa, complete with elaborate mosaics and painted wall plaster. Then, unfortunately, he died, taking all the information about the site to his grave. His finds were lost, his paintings sold, and now nothing remains from his excavation, apart from one crudely drawn map, showing the location of the ‘villa’, as well as a walled Roman cemetery (‘Heaven’s Walls’), also excavated in the 19th century, producing over 200 cremation urns. Some of the detail can also be pieced together from contemporary newspaper reports.

The puzzle was partially solved. Trenches dug by Time Team confirmed the position of the ‘Litlington villa’, although it was not possible to determine its full extent or layout. Finds from the site included a large quantity of ceramic roof tiles and box flue tiles from a hypocaust heating system, stone and ceramic tesserae from mosaic floors (some areas of flooring were intact), as well as numerous fragments of painted wall plaster – all confirming the Reverend Clack’s original description of the site as a well-appointed residence.

The trenches also located the position of the ‘Heaven’s Walls’ cemetery to the south-east. One largely intact inhumation burial was revealed (although left undisturbed and not excavated), and a quantity of disarticulated bone was recovered from graves disturbed by 19th century quarrying. Around the villa, a number of test pits suggested that further Roman remains may have been destroyed by the housing estate which lay to the north-east of the villa site.