Gadebridge Roman Villa, alternatively known as Gadebridge Park Roman Villa, is a ruined

Roman villa A Roman villa was typically a farmhouse or country house built in the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, sometimes reaching extravagant proportions. Typology and distribution Pliny the Elder (23–79 AD) distinguished two kinds of villas n ...

Hemel Hempstead Hemel Hempstead () is a town in the Dacorum district in Hertfordshire, England, northwest of London, which is part of the Greater London Urban Area. The population at the 2011 census was 97,500. Developed after the Second World War as a ne ...

Hertfordshire Hertfordshire ( or ; often abbreviated Herts) is one of the home counties in southern England. It borders Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire to the north, Essex to the east, Greater London to the south, and Buckinghamshire to the west. For govern ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

Excavation

A chance discovery in 1962, it was excavated in 1963-68 under the direction of David S. Neal. A second excavation took place in 2000, also under the direction of Dr Neal.

History

The site may have begun as a pre Roman farm, but after the Roman invasion of AD 43 its proximity to the Roman city of

Verulamium Verulamium was a town in Roman Britain. It was sited southwest of the modern city of St Albans in Hertfordshire, England. A large portion of the Roman city remains unexcavated, being now park and agricultural land, though much has been built upon ...

seems to have precipitated its development into a sort of spa and resort. From the Antonine Period, c. 138 AD, stone buildings were added, and around 300 AD a large swimming pool, the biggest in Roman Britain after the one at

Bath Bath may refer to: * Bathing, immersion in a fluid ** Bathtub, a large open container for water, in which a person may wash their body ** Public bathing, a public place where people bathe * Thermae, ancient Roman public bathing facilities Plac ...

were built. The site may have been leveled around AD 350 possibly because of its owner's support for the usurper emperor

Magnentius Magnus Magnentius ( 303 – 11 August 353) was a Roman general and usurper against Constantius II from 350 to 353. Of Germanic descent, Magnentius served with distinction in Gaul under the Western emperor Constans. On 18 January 350 Magnentius ...

. It returned to agricultural use and was used for cattle pens.

Conservation

The villa is situated in

Gadebridge Park Gadebridge Park is an urban park in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, England. History The first reference to a building on the land is in 1289 when there was a house called Burymilne. Before 1539 the land was the home of the Waterhouse family. Ri ...

. Since the excavations the site has been

scheduled A schedule or a timetable, as a basic time-management tool, consists of a list of times at which possible tasks, events, or actions are intended to take place, or of a sequence of events in the chronological order in which such things are i ...

and is under grassland. Artefacts from the villa are held by the

Dacorum Heritage Trust Dacorum Heritage (DH) is a local history advocacy group in the United Kingdom. It collects and records the history of the Borough of Dacorum, Hertfordshire, in the south of England, and aims to encourage the appreciation of the heritage of Dac ...

References

Sources

Gadebridge Roman Villa
Dacorum Heritage Trust, Accessed March 2012
Gadebridge Roman Villa
St Albans Museums, Accessed March 2012 *Neal, David S. (1974). ''The excavation of the Roman villa in Gadebridge Park, Hemel Hempstead, 1963-8'' (Reports of the Research Committee of the Society of Antiquaries of London, 31) *
Discover how Dacorum's largest Roman villa evolved
'Our Dacorum', Herts Memories Network. Accessed March 2012 {{Villas in Roman Britain Roman villas in Hertfordshire Dacorum Scheduled monuments in Hertfordshire 4th-century disestablishments in Roman Britain