SPECULATION over life in a Roman villa being excavated near Colemore is growing as the dig progresses.

Its location is a well-kept secret, but twice a year since 2010 Liss Archaeology volunteers have been uncovering it and this year’s autumn dig is to end at the weekend.

Thought to have been a Romano-British villa, rather than a Roman one, it is set in grain growing farmland.

The villa and its 80 metre by 90 metre grounds are enclosed by a ditch four metres wide and two metres deep.

Roman influence in Britain was significant in the late Iron Age, especially in southern England, and it’s thought the villa was used for about 500 years from around the first century AD.

Colemore dig director Juliet Smith added: “It would have been the equivalent of a manor house.

“We haven’t found any imported pottery favoured by Roman settlers, or any oyster shells, which were a staple of the Roman diet.

“We have found locally made pottery, and believe the villa was home to a Romano- British family.”

A water filtration system at the villa still works and it was built following guidelines set out in the only surviving major book on Roman architecture.

Juliet said: “The architect Vitruvius wrote a book called De architectura, and what we have uncovered follows his guidelines exactly.”

And it’s thought a Roman iron blast furnace found in the enclosure could have provided the money to build the villa and an income for its owners.

Juliet added: “The Romans came here for wheat and iron among other things, and the villa with its farmland is also on a deposit of iron ore, and there is clear evidence of iron working.”

The villa is part of a local Roman landscape which is slowly being revealed.

The now apparant density of traces of Roman habitation in the district has led experts to think the area was far busier during the Roman occupation than was earlier thought.

But it appears the villa quickly fell into disuse and dereliction after the last Romans left Britain early in the fifth century AD.

Juliet said: “One room has had cooking fires on the floor, and another had a bread oven built in it.

“Finally, its stone walls appear to have been knocked down and the useful stone taken. The rest is scattered around the enclosure.”

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