UK man discovers ancient Roman villa in his backyard

In America, you might get lucky and find an arrowhead while digging in the garden. In England, well, the finds are just slightly bigger—as in, you might find something like, say, an entire perfectly-preserved Roman villa.

Or at least, that’s what happened to Wiltshire, England resident Luke Irwin while digging in his yard to put in electrical wires. He and his wife had just recently purchased a new home in Wiltshire, and had decided to bring electricity to the barn on the property so their kids could play ping-pong inside.

“The electricians originally suggested stringing up an overhead cable from our house to supply the power for the barn, but I insisted it had to be an underground cable,” Irwin told The Guardian.

One small choice, one huge discovery

His insistence led to the discovery of one of the largest Roman villas ever discovered in Great Britain.

The electricians hadn’t been drilling for long when they struck something hard about 18 inches down—something they quickly discovered was a mosaic.

“We knew the significance of that straight away,” said Irwin. “No one since the Romans has laid mosaics as house floors in Britain. Fortunately we were able to stop the workmen just before they began to wield pickaxes to break up the mosaic layer.”

The family quickly called in the Wiltshire Archaeology Service, Historic England, and the Salisbury Museum. Archaeologists quickly confirmed that the mosaic was indeed part of the floor of a Roman villa, which they determined had been built between 175 and 220 CE.

An eight-day exploratory excavation discovered sections of walls nearly five feet (1.5 m) in height. Experts now believe the villa was three stories high and nearly 330 feet (100 m) in width and length. Further, it had 20 to 25 rooms on the first floor alone.

“It is not just the size of the building – which is vast – but the other discoveries that we have made that reveal what a special place this must have been,” said Dr. David Roberts, a Historic England archaeologist. “We have found discarded oyster and whelk shells. To keep them fresh, they must have been brought in barrels of salt water from the sea, which is miles away, and that shows just how rich the villa’s owners must have been.”

In fact, the sea is around 45 miles (72 km) from the site. But shells aren’t even the tip of the iceberg for items found, despite the limited excavations so far. Discoveries include a Roman well; a stone coffin built for a Roman child, which up until very recently had been used to hold geraniums; underfloor heating pipes for the villa; coins; brooches; bones of animals, including a suckling pig; and “extremely high status pottery,” according to the BBC.

Even the Irwins’ own house yielded an intriguing discovery—it rests on what used to be the center of the villa on a large slab of marble from the English island of Purbeck. The slab, too, is likely to be of Roman origin.

“Everything about this villa suggests it was made of the highest-quality materials,” Roberts told The Guardian. “We have identified bits of stone that have come from at least 13 different British quarries. This was the country house of a powerful, rich Roman. Doubtless he also had a city house in London or Cirencester.”

But wait, there’s more!

Obviously, the Roman villa itself—which is now officially titled the Deverill Villa, after the name of the Irwin’s home—is one of the best finds of the century. However, the site has even more to tell than Roman life—because it was actually used past the time of Roman occupation of Britain.

In fact, it looks like the site was in use up to the fifth century, as archaeologists have uncovered timber dating to that time period. This means the complete excavation of this site could grant new insights into one of the least understood eras of British history.

“The rest of the site has not been touched since the house collapsed more than 1,400 years ago, and it is unquestionably of enormous importance,” said Roberts. “This is a hugely valuable site with incredible potential. The discovery of such an elaborate and extraordinarily well-preserved villa, undamaged by agriculture for over 1,500 years, is unparalleled in recent years and it gives us a perfect opportunity to understand Roman and post-Roman Britain.”

The bad news

All of this excitement comes with one big piece of disappointing news: After putting the few artifacts uncovered in the Salisbury Museum, the entire site has now been re-buried, as none of the groups involved can afford to fully excavate and preserve such an enormous site.

“Unfortunately, it would cost hundreds of thousands of pounds to fully excavate and the preserve the site, which cannot be done with the current pressures,” Roberts told the Telegraph. “We would very much like to go back and carry out more digs to further our understanding of the site. But it’s a question of raising the money and taking our time, because as with all archaeological work there is the risk of destroying the very thing you seek to uncover.”

We can only hope that they will secure funding in the future. Irwin himself probably captured the significance of Deverill Villa most poignantly:

“When I held some of the tessaras, the mosaic tiles that were found, in the palm of my hand, the history of the place felt tangible, like an electric shock. The brilliance of their colours was just extraordinary, especially as they have been buried for so long.

“To think that someone lived on this site 1,500 years ago is almost overwhelming. You look out at an empty field from your front door, and yet centuries ago one of the biggest homes in all of Britain at the time was standing there.”

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Image credit: Manifesto

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