Great Witcombe - a hidden gem of Roman Britain

If you’re unfortunate enough to be stuck in a car with me while driving up the M5 past Gloucester, you might end up getting dragged to one of Roman Britain’s hidden gems. 

This place is convenient to get to (leave the M5 at junction 11a, then off the A417), but also feels nicely secluded. It’s only reachable up a winding, dead-end farm track, the sort where you have to cross your fingers and hope you don’t meet a massive tractor half way up. The track eventually takes you to the top of a pretty combe below the scarp of the Cotswolds, and to the location of the country mansion that in The Lion and the Lamb I call ‘White Hen House’ – otherwise known as Great Witcombe Roman Villa.

Approaching the villa from the car park - the standing structures (not accessible) were built to protect the bath suite mosaics

Considering that Great Witcombe must once have been among the gems of late Roman villas, and considering how well it survives (relatively speaking), it’s wonderful that it’s free and accessible at any time. Presentation is minimal; there’s no visitor centre, and only a single information board offers a reconstruction of the villa in its heyday.

But I’m not calling Great Witcombe ‘hidden’ because it lies (literally) off the beaten track – rather, because we have yet to unearth its real secrets. The surviving foundations give a decent idea of the layout of the villa, bearing in mind that everything visible has been ‘tidied up’ since the original nineteenth-century excavations – and nineteenth-century excavations were certainly not up to the standard of modern ones. Antiquarians often dug down to get to the good stuff, i.e. solid foundations and interesting finds, without realising that simple layers of soil can tell us so much about the use and development of a site.

Original buttresses, built to stop the villa slipping down the rather steep slope

Still, the surviving foundations are impressive enough, especially when you soak in the gorgeous bucolic setting. But there is much more to Great Witcombe than meets the eye. In 1999 the site owners, English Heritage, commissioned Cotswold Archaeology to undertake topographical and geophysical surveys of the villa and its environs, and these threw up some tantalising results.

First of all, the surveys suggest that we currently see only the uppermost parts of the villa – the two wings may actually extend almost twice as far as the currently exposed remains. What you now see could be just the upper of two full courtyards running down the slope. At the bottom of the slope, along the banks of a stream, there also seems to be a 2-acre enclosure that contained several buildings, including an earlier villa. Nearby is a possible water mill. Elsewhere there is evidence for a pottery kiln and other large-scale industrial activity, substantial terracing and landscaping, and – most intriguing of all – a possible temple-like structure on a slope overlooking the villa.

Basically, at Great Witcome we’re only seeing the cherry right now. The rest of the cake is still hidden from view, buried under turf but mercifully undisturbed by later agriculture. This was clearly one of the most important villas of late Roman Britain – a bustling community of agriculture, industry, culture and religion. Who knows what secrets lie beneath the surface in this secluded little combe, just waiting to be unearthed by the spades of future archaeologists?

The Darts of Mars

Fancy having these nasty-looking beasts raining down on your head?

These are plumbatae, lead-weighted darts that are a distinctively late Roman weapon. Originally they would have had wooden shafts ending with fletchings, rather like mini-javelins.

Each infantry soldier would carry about five of these nasty weapons behind his shield, ready to hurl them in advance of a charge. They would be flung (possibly underarm) high above the enemy ranks, with the lump of lead giving them extra force as they plummeted down.

Plumbatae were so deadly, they became known as Martiobarbuli – the ‘darts of Mars’ – and some regiments were specialists in their use.

These examples are from the museum at Wroxeter Roman City museum, which I visited earlier this year, and provide some of the best evidence we have for regular Roman garrisons in the cities of late Roman Britain.