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Victor's reconstruction of a large rural villa in Roman Britain © Victor Ambrus
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'...next comes the spacious and expansive cold room of the baths, in the opposite walls of which are two bath tubs curving outward as if forced out of the wall; these are quite roomy...' Pliny.

Town and country
The trends, the shops and the influential places to be in Roman Britain were in the towns; centres of commerce, administration and power. But towns required resources and as the Roman way of life became more widely adopted the rural farmsteads who supplied the towns gradually became more affluent.

The usual extended family-run farm, centred around a few roundhouses tilling fields and rearing animals, continued for the majority of native Britons. But a few became extremely successful and in Romanising themselves stepped into a new, cultured way of life. These early agricultural entrepreneurs grew into powerful estate owners and in doing so built for themselves fine country houses more commonly known as villas.

Small to big
The term 'villa' simply means 'farm' rather than the luxurious holiday home that many readers will be familiar with. Largely started in the later 1st century, villas first appear as rectangular stone 'upgrades' to earlier timber roundhouses. This is as far as many smallholdings would get, but more famous are the grandiose manors which developed during the third and fourth centuries, such as Chedworth and Lullingstone. These villas came into a class of their own. Kitted out with expensive hypocaust under-floor heating, ranges of buildings and accommodation, bath houses, mosaics and private temples, the large villa was the country house of the Roman aristocracy. Many believe that the big villa estates were only occasionally lived in by their owners, who would have spent their dynamic lives in the towns, but as Guy de la Bédoyère points out in his book, The Buildings of Roman Britain, there is no actual archaeological evidence for this.

A place in the sun
In a similar distribution to the towns of Roman Britain, the villas we know about appear to occupy an area south and east of a line roughly drawn from the River Severn to York. Of course there are exceptions, such as the south coast of Wales, but generally speaking the density of villa occupation sits comfortably in relation to the more secure and lucrative areas of the province, often tied to the better quality agricultural land. As rural outposts of classical living the great villas muster a style of their own which echoes that of the bustling towns. As outlying properties they were symbols of status and wealth which even the most disinterested native Briton must have been mildly impressed by.

The end of villas
The more powerful country estates continued to be lucrative concerns for a period after Roman withdrawal in the early fifth century, however, without the back-up of the Roman administration and its demanding towns the majority of villas appear to have fallen into decline. Those once mildly impressed native Britons and incoming Saxons showed scant regard for the luxury of Rome as many villas suffered further damage and decay from their neglect or robbery. It's easy to imagine that those wealthy enough to own country estates would take themselves and their wealth away to safer homes, possibly on the continent, when the Roman administration started to dissolve. Some may even have planned to return some day, evidenced by the large number of late Roman treasure hoards dotted about Britain. Whatever the plans and fates of the owners, even tenant house sitters would be bound to lose faith as the structure of civilisation gradually tumbled into what used to be called the Dark Ages.

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