Many readers of Current Archaeology will have visited Chedworth, one of England’s largest and best-preserved Roman villas, which is a National Trust property near Cirencester. If that trip was before 2010, you would have seen a layout little changed since the middle of the 19th century, with stub walls topped by curious ‘rooflets’; cramped sheds standing over the site’s mosaics; and indecipherable concrete settings that looked like garden paths. In other words, a period piece, but one that did not make much sense to many people seeing the site for the first time. Since 2010, though, the site has been transformed: today, visitors encounter the large new cover-building standing over the villa’s west range of rooms, as well as new signs and audio and printed guides to explain the site.
These changes are all thanks to a major grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund to upgrade both the villa remains and the site’s visitor facilities – but another key aspect of this work has reached completion only this year, with the long-awaited publication of a major monograph documenting archaeological work on the Roman villa between 1864 and 2010. Released a mere 158 years after the site first saw the light of day, this is slow even for archaeological backlog – but the fact that it has finally seen the light of day is a major tribute to the staff of the National Trust, who surmounted so many hurdles (not least COVID-19) to bring the site to publication in partnership with the Roman Society (see ‘Further information’).
The story of Chedworth’s discovery has been told before in CA (see Joe Flatman’s column in issue 356 for a round-up of the magazine’s coverage of the site), but to summarise: the villa remains were first uncovered by James Farrer, whose antiquarian tendencies had already seen him eviscerate the great Neolithic chambered tomb of Maeshowe in Orkney – and he had the chance to exercise these tendencies again at Chedworth, as he happened to be a relative of the landowner, the Earl of Eldon. When Farrer was shown fragments of pottery brought to the surface by an under-gamekeeper’s ferret, he quickly recognised the material as Roman and, in one remarkably productive summer in 1864, uncovered almost all of what can be seen at Chedworth today. It was quick work, but unfortunately Farrer’s enthusiasm for digging was not matched by an enthusiasm for publication: he left no records to help us understand his work, and the great majority of his finds were simply discarded.
