Excavations on the Roman villa site, Acton Scott 2009

A second season of trial excavations in September 2009 examined further the structure within the enclosure.

Seven evaluation trenches were excavated in Laundry Meadow in September 2009, with the principal aim of trying to define the area occupied by the Roman villa, with secondary aims of attempting to locate some of the 1817 or 1844 excavations, and investigating some of the peripheral features identified by the 2007 geophysical survey in this field.

The excavations revealed a spread of rubble possibly representing a yard surface, internal floor surfaces, including traces of an opus signinum floor, and a section of collapsed roof comprised of stone roof tiles.

These excavations also examined some of the features identified by the geophysical survey outside the eastern side of the enclosure, and located an Iron Age and Roman ditch, and a section of the post-medieval road whose re-routing in 1817 led to the discovery of the Roman villa.

Although the enclosure ditch was not examined in the 2009 excavations, a small coin was recovered from the excavated topsoil near the eastern arm of the enclosure. The coin appears to be a small Iron Age copper alloy coin of Iceni type.

The 2008-9 trial excavations confirmed the results of the geophysical survey, having found the remains of floors, a collapsed roof, stone surfaces, and other debris associated with a Roman building.

The excavations have also now defined the area that contains the building remains, and have shown that they do not extend beyond the eastern arm of the enclosure. These remains appear to belong to the structure found by Francis Stackhouse Acton in 1817 and 1844, though they lie on the opposite side to the field to the remains shown on her sketch plan. The trial trenches located in the eastern part of Laundry Meadow (and in Clover Bank, the adjoining field to the east) found no signs of a Roman structure. No definite traces of the 19th-century excavations were seen in the trial trenching in 2008 or 2009, though it is possible that some shallow gulleys located in some of the trenches may be the bases of 19th century exploratory trenches cut into the topsoil to locate solid features. Otherwise the Roman deposits encountered all appeared to be intact and undisturbed (other than by ploughing) beneath the topsoil.

You can download an interim report on the 2009 excavations here: