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above Chedworth Roman Villa, photographed in 1966. Until 2010, the visitor experience had changed little from when the site was discovered in 1864; today, the cover-buildings and interpretations have changed, but the villa layout and treatment (with the site museum at the left-hand end of the building in the centre) remain largely the same.
Chedworth Roman Villa: exploring over 150 years of interpretation
Chedworth Roman Villa, near Cirencester, has been open to visitors since its discovery 158 years ago – but, until today, the site never had a formal academic publication. A new monograph has now drawn together decades of research, as Simon Esmonde Cleary, Jason Wood, Emma Durham, Martin Papworth, and Julie Reynolds report.
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 th
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