Newport Roman Villa was a

Romano-British The Romano-British culture arose in Britain under the Roman Empire following the Roman conquest in AD 43 and the creation of the province of Britannia. It arose as a fusion of the imported Roman culture with that of the indigenous Britons, ...

farmhouse constructed in 280 AD. It is located near to

Newport, Isle of Wight Newport is the county town of the Isle of Wight, an island county off the south coast of England. The town is slightly north of the centre of the island, and is in the civil parish of Newport and Carisbrooke. It has a quay at the head of the na ...

Discovery and excavation

Newport Roman Villa was unearthed in 1926 when garage foundations were laid by a nearby homeowner. The site was excavated and the ground plan of the villa house was uncovered. In 1926 the Mayor of Newport, Alderman John Curtis Millgate, J.P., proposed that the Newport Town Council accept the site of the Roman Villa and erect a building over the villa to preserve it. After reviewing the suggestion and considering the costs involved, the Town Council (under a new Mayor), declined the offer due to the costs involved. Alderman Millgate decided to purchase the site himself and constructed a structure over the villa. Following his death in 1956, the site passed into the ownership of his daughter, Grace Millgate. In 1960, when the building needed a fair amount of repair, Miss Millgate offered the site to Newport Town Council, however it was again declined. The Isle of Wight County Council agreed to accept the gift of the site from Miss Millgate in December 1960 and the deeds were handed over in April 1961. It is now a

scheduled ancient monument In the United Kingdom, a scheduled monument is a nationally important archaeological site or historic building, given protection against unauthorised change. The various pieces of legislation that legally protect heritage assets from damage and d ...

, giving it protected status. Isle of Wight Gazette - Friday 17 April - Thursday 30 April 2009 - page 9 - "New roof secures future of mosaics"

History

Newport Roman Villa was constructed in about 280 AD with local stone including flint, chalk, limestone and greensand with the walls remaining almost at their original height. The building was roofed with massive slabs of Bembridge limestone which needed large roof timbers to support them. Many of these roof slabs had a distinctive shape, pierced with a single hole to take a nail, were found on the site. It is likely the building was the centre of a wealthy estate. The discovery of fragments of

window A window is an opening in a wall, door, roof, or vehicle that allows the exchange of light and may also allow the passage of sound and sometimes air. Modern windows are usually glazed or covered in some other transparent or translucent mat ...

glass on the site shows that the building had some glazed windows, and remains of painted wall plaster during excavation show that at least some of the rooms had brightly coloured interior walls. It features a well-preserved Roman bath suite with

hypocaust A hypocaust ( la, hypocaustum) is a system of central heating in a building that produces and circulates hot air below the floor of a room, and may also warm the walls with a series of pipes through which the hot air passes. This air can warm th ...

underfloor heating Underfloor heating and cooling is a form of central heating and cooling that achieves indoor climate control for thermal comfort using hydronic or electrical heating elements embedded in a floor. Heating is achieved by conduction, radiation and ...

. The furnace for heating the bath suite was outside the back wall of the villa at the end of the bath wing, and a slave would have been responsible for providing it with fuel. The hot air from the furnace passed through an arch at the base of the villa's back wall and circulated under the raised floors of the three rooms. It remains unknown when life at the villa ended. During excavation, the skull of a woman in her early thirties was found in the corner of one of the rooms. It has been suggested that she was killed during a raid in an abandoned building. However it is also viewed that the abandonment of the island's villas by the middle of the fourth century could be due to economic hardship rather than the threat of attacks by Anglo-saxon raiders.

Museum

The villa has since been reconstructed based on archaeological evidence featuring a Roman kitchen and Roman garden. It is now open to the public usually from around April to October. The villa regularly has over 5,000 visitors per year, with a further 1,400 school children taking part in educational visits. It is located on Cypress Road in Newport on the

Isle of Wight The Isle of Wight ( ) is a Counties of England, county in the English Channel, off the coast of Hampshire, from which it is separated by the Solent. It is the List of islands of England#Largest islands, largest and List of islands of England#Mo ...

in the middle of a residential development. For 2009 the villa underwent a roof replacement project, involving essential repairs and replacement of the cover-building roof structure to protect it from further weathering. The project has been joint-funded by the

Isle of Wight Council The Isle of Wight Council is a unitary authority covering the Isle of Wight, an island in the south of England. It is currently made up of 39 seats. Since the 2021 election, there has been an 'Alliance' coalition administration of Independents, ...

and

English Heritage English Heritage (officially the English Heritage Trust) is a charity that manages over 400 historic monuments, buildings and places. These include prehistoric sites, medieval castles, Roman forts and country houses. The charity states that i ...

, which grant-aided over £40,000 towards costs. The roof has been designed to improve environmental conditions, reducing moisture levels which have contributed to a build-up of algae on the mosaics below.

References

External links

Newport Roman Villa website on the Isle of Wight Council's website
- iwight.gov.uk
Newport Roman Villa
- official site {{authority control Roman villas on the Isle of Wight Tourist attractions on the Isle of Wight Museums on the Isle of Wight Museums of ancient Rome in the United Kingdom Archaeological museums in England Newport, Isle of Wight 3rd-century establishments in Roman Britain