Druce Farm Roman Villa

Left Room N6 in Phase 3 (AD 200 250) was given a floor made of red ceramic tesserae cut from roof and box flue tiles. The room was heated by a fireplace built into the eastern wall, visible at the top of the photograph. below left Room N7 in Phase 3 (AD 200 250), with the surviving third of a chequerboard mosaic floor bordered by a meander pattern. Fragments of wall plaster showed that the room had cream coloured walls with a pink stripe.

Druce Farm Roman villa: celebrating a community dig in the heart of Dorset

Roman villas are rarely excavated these days, because we already ‘know about them’. Yet when a villa is excavated – in part or as a whole – what we find defies what we think we know. The report on Druce Farm Roman villa, excavated between 2012 and 2018 by volunteer members of the East Dorset Antiquarian Society, has been published in quick time and in exemplary form. As Chris Catling discovers, it makes us think again about what defines a villa.