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Eccles Roman Villa

4th-century disestablishments in Roman BritainRoman villas in Kent

At Eccles in Kent the remains of a huge Roman Villa with palatial dimensions were excavated between 1962 and 1976. In the second century AD, the villa was almost 112 m long. Over 135 different rooms have been identified throughout the various periods of construction and reconstruction. The villa was abandoned in the Fourth century and much of it was removed in the Thirteenth century for the construction of Aylesford Priory. The villa lies on the east side of the Medway Valley. Roman remains were already known from the Nineteenth century on. During the course of excavation, a number of human burials of Roman date were found deposited beneath the villa floors. Further finds included fragments of Roman pottery and coins. A large post-Roman cemetery was discovered adjacent to the south-east wing of the villa. There were also some remains of a pre-Roman, Iron Age settlement. The earliest Roman villa dates from about 65 A.D. and consisted of a long row of at least 12 rooms, a porticus and probably a second story. Five of these rooms might once have contained floors with mosaics. In front of the house was a long ornamental pool. The building was of high status, as stone buildings were otherwise not so common at this early age in Roman Britain. A huge bath house was built next to it. In several rooms fragments of mosaics were found, most of them in a bad state of preservation. One of them most likely shows two gladiators.The baths were damaged by fire and around A.D. 120 a new bath house and extensions to the dwelling were built, and continued in use until A.D. 180; a third and more extensive bath suite was then erected, and the house once more remodelled by the addition of a rear corridor and new tessellations, as well as a new wing with a channelled hypocaust. A final reconstruction took place after A.D. 290, when the rear corridor was converted into a suite of rooms with hypocaust. Many rooms had tessellated floors, remains of well paintings were found.It has been suggested that the villa was first established by Adminius.The excavation record of the villa reported that much of the building stone was likely robbed in the Medieval period for construction elsewhere, for instance the 12th century St Mary's Church at Burham incorporates Roman tiles into its fabric. The results of the excavations were published in several short reports. A final excavation report is so far not yet published.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Eccles Roman Villa (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors).

Eccles Roman Villa
Tonbridge and Malling Aylesford

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N 51.31795 ° E 0.468948 °
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Millhall


ME20 7BY Tonbridge and Malling, Aylesford
England, United Kingdom
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Burham
Burham

Burham is a village and civil parish in the borough of Tonbridge and Malling in Kent, England. According to the 2001 census it had a population of 1,251, decreasing to 1,195 at the 2011 Census. The village is near the Medway towns. The history of Burham can be traced to Roman times. AD43 saw the Battle of the Medway at the crossing point on the River Medway, where Burham is now, when the invading Roman legions, advancing west across Kent, were confronted by a massed army of the ancient British tribes. The Roman victory altered the course of history in Britain, and the remains of Roman buildings have been found in Burham and the neighbouring village of Eccles. There has been a Settlement in Burham since Saxon times, "ham" being the Saxon word for "settlement" — the "Bur" part of the name comes from "burgh", or borough, referring to the borough of Rochester. The name "Burham" means "the village near the borough". In the 11th century Burham belonged to Leofwine Godwinson, brother of King Harold. He was killed along with his brother at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. It is listed as having six sulings (about 240 acres) of land. There were two major farms, 15 "villeins" each farming 30 acres (120,000 m2) and 20 "borderers" each farming about 5 acres (20,000 m2). There was a church and a mill with woodland sufficient to support 20 hogs. The medieval church of St Mary is now redundant and stands on the riverbank. It is now cared for by the Churches Conservation Trust having been saved from dereliction by the Friends of Friendless Churches in the 1950s. About 1830 Burham became a "cement village" on the Medway, after the discovery of the manufacturing technique for Portland cement (so called because of its resemblance to Portland stone). By 1841 the village's population had grown to 380 and increased to a maximum of 1,725 in 1901. Today it is about 1,300.