RUTLAND, England – British readers will be no stranger to barn conversions – expensive, extensive, and all over the countryside, usually with a BMW parked outside. However, it seems that the phenomenon is hardly new, since an ancient Roman barn conversion, complete with a steam room and a plunge pool, has been discovered on a property in Rutland, situated between Ketton and Luffenham.
Archaeologists think that the Roman owners converted an agricultural timber barn into the new property, which also features a mosaic depicting Homer’s Iliad. The latter has been described as “as “the most exciting Roman mosaic discovery in the UK in the last century.” Underfloor heating and heating ducts also appear in the property, in which stone replaced the original timber. An extension had been added, to give a bigger dining area. The site dates from between the 3rd and 4th century CE.
Very excited to see the Rutland #Roman villa mosaic uncovered on #DiggingforBritain #BBC2 (📷 Historic England) pic.twitter.com/rzxRPYFPDB
— Helsbels (@Helenus_) January 4, 2022
The deputy director of the University of Leicester Archaeological Services, John Thomas, told the Guardian in November that:
“It’s difficult to overstate the significance of this Roman villa complex to our understanding of life in late Roman Britain. While previous excavations of individual buildings, or smaller-scale villas, have given us a snapshot, this discovery in Rutland is much more complete and provides a clearer picture of the whole complex.
“The aim of this year’s work has been to investigate other buildings within the overall villa complex to provide context to the Trojan war mosaic. While that is a wonderful, eye-catching discovery, we will be able to learn much more about why it was here, and who might have commissioned it, by learning about the villa as a whole….”The mosaic is a fantastic … find, but it’s just one element of a much bigger settlement that we now know of from the geophysics. The survival is just fantastic, it’s a complete one-off really.”
New finds at the Rutland Roman villa site show the owners were style savvy.
— Historic England (@HistoricEngland) November 28, 2022
The home was designed to reflect taste and influence. The dig, in partnership with @ULASarchaeology, has revealed decorative mosaics and a stylish bathroom suite.
Read more ➡️ https://t.co/pnfCqOjt7d pic.twitter.com/WSfPoDymuG
Jennifer Browning, projects officer with the University of Leicester, added, “It’s amazing; it sort of makes up for all the muddy ditches that I’ve spent a lot of my time in. Being able to work on something like this, it brings you a lot closer to the people that were living here.”
The University of Leicester is working on the project in partnership with Historic England and Rutland County Council.
Although this is a secular rather than a religious discovery, it still has potential significance for Pagans in the UK. It tells us more about the Roman occupation of Britain, which obviously came complete with its complement of deities, some of which were syncretised with British deities (such as Sulis Minerva in Bath).
This particular site – apart from the sophistication of its internal features – is interesting because of the presence of the mosaic: the owner would have been familiar with this great work of the ancient Greek mythological canon. This site is not far from a well-known Roman site at Thistleton, also in Rutland.
The Thistleton site has evidence of a large temple complex and archaeologists say that the site itself probably formed a small market settlement on the border between the tribal lands of the Celtic peoples of the Catuvellauni and the Coritani and was not far from Ermine Street, one of the main Roman highways in Britain.
Other Roman buildings have been found throughout the area. The Thistleton temple is held to date from the late pre-Roman Iron-Age to the late-4th or early-5th centuries, originally timber but subsequently – like the barn conversion – replaced by a limestone building. This was floored with stone and with red and white tesserae. In the late 3rd century CE, the temple was rebuilt again, in the form of a basilica. Archaeologists found a silver plaque in the foundations, which bore an inscription dedicated to the god Vheterus. We know very little about this deity, but it is interesting to speculate whether he might also have been worshipped by the barn converters!
Historic England’s senior archaeologist and project manager of HE excavation, Ian Barnes, has told the press that the newly discovered site is a “remarkable place” which was “built for comfort, and clearly to impress – but who?…analysis of our findings… will tell us so much more about the people who lived here, and their connections.”
We asked the Pagan community for their views:
Shamanic practitioner Karen Kelly told TWH, “I’m currently writing my dissertation on similar villas in the Coln valley. At the end of the third century, the tribal elite began to withdraw their money from public works in towns and instead spend it on their rural homes. In a way, it was a step back toward the lifestyle of the late Iron Age, or towards that of the so-called Dark Ages… “
She continued, “It was at least partly caused by Diocletian’s reform of local town government. The Curia or local council for the civitas capitals were previously largely local tribal elites. With these reforms, he made the curia personally responsible for any local tax shortfall. Understandably it made involvement in local government less desirable. And as a result, they spent their money on their own estates rather than on public works.”
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