THE 2017 Dacre Lecture ‘Roman Villas in the Southern Counties’ was given by Tony King, professor of Roman Archaeology at the University of Winchester, for the Andover History and Archaeology Society, at Andover Guildhall in April.

Tony outlined the context of Roman villas and their regional variations. A common view is that villas were stately homes in the countryside: Bignor, West Sussex, was certainly a smart house for the ultra-wealthy. Another interpretation holds that villas were working farms, their buildings ranged around a large open courtyard: Sparsholt villa is a local example. Barry Cunliffe observed that many Roman villas in the environs of Danebury were developed from Iron Age enclosures.

Tony described his department’s excavations at Dinnington and Yarford, both near Ilchester, an important Roman market centre on the Fosse Way.

Dinnington villa was only discovered in 2002. Winchester archaeologists took over the excavation from the Time Team in 2005. It is on a large scale with mosaic floors of the 3rd – 4th centuries, using designs from the Ilchester mosaic school. One special feature at Dinnington is a large curved-ended hypocaust, from which over 500 pieces of mosaic were collected. The mosaic was elaborate, with subjects from Roman mythology, using more colours than any other in Britain. But it was not there for long. By 360AD, rooms were being used for grain storage, corn-drying and horses. By the 5th century it had disappeared.

The Yarford excavations of 2003-5 revealed a small villa of seven rooms terraced into the hillside, one of the most westerly in southern Britain. The mosaic the team found had an almost identical design to one from Colchester of 150 years before. On the other side of the valley, at Maundown, was a contemporary settlement of a set of round houses, with a coin hoard underneath the fireplace. The owner seems to have set his face against Romanisation, but both ended by becoming working farm buildings, disappearing by the 390s.

Meonstoke, like most villas in Hampshire, is on chalkland. Unfortunately, the A32 cuts straight across the site. Well-preserved under a field boundary, so not ploughed, the distinctive feature of this villa was the east elevation which collapsed in situ.With careful work and the assistance of the British Museum, it was possible to reconstruct the architecture of the whole of this façade. It had rounded arches, brick and flint-work walls and Ionic columns, with a steep roof. The height of the gable was almost 12m (39 feet). The nearest architectural parallel is Romanesque church design of a later period. Excavations in 2015 showed that the courtyard lies under the main road, on the other side of which they discovered a small hexagonal building, a temple, similar to that found at Dunkirt Barn, Abbotts Ann.

The religious aspect of villas has come up the agenda, and archaeologists now focus more on their life history and demise.

Professor King was very warmly thanks for a very interesting and informative lecture, worthily commemorating Andover’s most significant archaeologist, Max Dacre (1910-1990).