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Archaeology students from the University of Leicester have uncovered the remains of a Roman villa in Leicestershire, near Loughborough.
Clues to the villa’s presence had been surfacing for years, in the form of small finds such as coins, brooches, and building materials emerging from ploughsoil, but it was not until 2018 that aerial photography provided a context for these objects, revealing the outline of a 70m-long structure. In May of this year, a magnetic survey of the area was undertaken with SUMO GeoSurveys, led by Time Team’s Dr John Gater, to reveal more details of the building’s plan ahead of excavation. The survey mapped a wide range of features within the landscape, including earlier features such as ring ditches and field systems indicating possibly Iron Age activity. Within the villa itself, ground-penetrating radar (GPR) was able to reveal room divisions inside the complex.
Over the course of two weeks, first-year students taking part in the university’s summer field school brought some of these remains to light, supervised by experienced archaeologists from University of Leicester Archaeological Services (ULAS). They have now exposed a north–south plan, featuring two wings that extend the width of the main villa building from 12m in its central portion to 30m at either end. Investigations within the walls showed that new rooms had been added over time, with the remains of large granite stone blocks marking out their foundations, and fragments of painted wall plaster as well as ceramic and stone tesserae hint at a richly decorated living space.
The complex lies within a network of ditches forming possible trackways and enclosures, suggesting that the villa – which is thought to have been founded in the 2nd century AD – grew to become the centre of a wealthy agricultural estate within Roman Leicestershire’s busy rural landscape. Animal bones testify to this agricultural activity, and crop marks in an adjacent field suggest that the extent of the estate was much larger than the 3.5ha area that was investigated this summer.
There was also evidence to suggest that the villa had developed from an Iron Age farmstead, with finds from boundary ditches attesting to activity within this period, while pottery and coinage from the building’s earliest phases spoke of occupation in the 1st century, before the villa itself was established.
This is the second Roman villa to have been investigated by University of Leicester archaeologists in recent years: in 2021, ULAS, in partnership with Historic England, were in Rutland excavating another grand country residence, which housed an elaborate mosaic depicting scenes from the Trojan War (see CA 383).
John Thomas, Deputy Director of ULAS, explained that the Loughborough villa not only provided a new example for the East Midlands, but that structures like this and the Rutland site are helping to establish Leicestershire and Rutland as an important area for understanding life at Roman villas in central England.
The dig has been filmed for a future episode of Time Team, focusing on the experience of the students taking part in their first excavation; the screening date is yet to be announced, but a short preview of the findings can be seen on the Time Team Official YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6NItqjw79w.
Text: Rebecca Preedy / Photo: University of Leicester
