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Geophysics results for Roman Villa site
This plan was drawn by Frances Stackhouse Acton as a result of excavations which took place in 1844. It shows part of the villa complex with its hypocaust heating system. (Image courtesy of Shropshire Archives)
In 1817 Roman remains were found during roadworks to create a new route through Acton Scott to Hatton and in 1844 Frances Stackhouse Acton supervised the excavation of the site of those remains. She uncovered part of a Roman Villa with hypocaust system for under floor heating and with decorated wall plaster.
Magnetometer survey
The "chariot" used by ArchaeoPhysica for their magnetometry work is made of non-ferrous materials to avoid distortion of the data collected.
In the 20th Century aerial photographs indicated the presence of a large enclosure ditch in the adjacent field, of probable Iron Age or Romano-British date. In 2007 the Acton Scott Heritage Project commissioned ArchaeoPhysica Ltd to carry out a geophysical survey of both fields. They used magnetometry to detect signs of magnetic anomalies produced for example by hearths or kilns. The method relies on the fact that the magnetic alignment of the earth changes over time in a known manner and that a process such as metal working “fixes” the magnetic alignment of the slag or hearth as it was at that time when the firing occurred. The magnetometer was carried over the site in ArchaeoPhysica’s wooden “chariot”, so designed that it contains no metal that could interfere with the results. Even steel toe caps would distort the picture!
Resistivity survey
Martin Roseveare of ArchaeoPhysica demonstrates resistivity surveying equipment on the Roman Villa site at Acton Scott.
The second method used was an Electrical Resistance Survey where the ground was tested by measuring the resistance to electrical charges passed through it. Areas of high resistance might indicate below ground structures,.
ASHP volunteers were able to try out these methods for themselves and aid the collection of data.
The results
These results were obtained by ArchaeoPhysica in November 2007. The main features have been marked on the image and await further archaeological investigation.
The final results have now arrived and indicate a complex settlement story.
Before the survey began we knew about the Roman villa excavated by Frances Stackhouse Acton in 1844, and about an Iron Age or Roman cropmark enclosure.
Now it would seem that the list extends to:-
• 1 x Roman villa with buildings surrounding a 40metre square courtyard
• 1 x possible early Roman villa or outlying villa building
• 1 x aqueduct
• 2 x Iron Age defended settlements
• 1 x undefended Iron Age/Romano-British settlement – possibly estate workers houses
• 1 x Roman road leading to villa
• Several large pits of unknown use but possibly older than villa
• Post-Roman field boundaries not indicated on later maps
Unanswered questions
The geophysical survey has made some unexpected and exciting discoveries. It is almost certain, for example, that a rectangular building existed within the cropmark enclosure – its Roman date seemingly confirmed by fragments of hypocaust tile and tegulae found here by the shovel pit testing. A contour hugging aqueduct, possibly in a stone culvert about 0.5m wide, which may have fed into a bath house, is also likely.
However the size of the villa complex itself is of interest. If covering an area 110m x 70m as indicated by the survey, it would be a large and significant complex, all the more important for being in an isolated spot well away from Wroxeter – a villa perhaps at the centre of a large agricultural estate. There are tantalizing suggestions that the villa may indeed be very prestigious – a circular feature in the courtyard lined up with the centre of what might be the villa’s centre block could have been an ornamental feature – a fountain for instance.
Perhaps the most obvious question remains unanswered; which was the villa building excavated by Frances Stackhouse Acton? The 1844 manuscript excavation report places it in the eastern part of the western field (Laundry Meadow), and the later Ordnance Survey maps also place it in this field. However a plan in the 1846 Archaeologia report would appear to place the site a little to the east, in the next field (Clover Bank). The complex suggested by the geophysical survey in Clover Bank appears too large to correspond with that in the 1844 discovery, and the structure located by the survey within the cropmark farmstead enclosure in Laundry Meadow is too small!
Following on from the geophysical survey a sustained period of shovel pit testing has occurred (see report elsewhere on this site for description of technique). This has now covered the whole area surveyed by ArchaeoPhysica.