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Back in 2002, Time Team was invited to excavate a bare field at Dinnington in Somerset. It turned out to be one of the most remarkable digs that the Team had ever undertaken. Just eight inches beneath the surface were the remains of some fabulous mosaics, which had once formed the floors of rooms in a huge Roman villa. A villa so big, in fact, that in the three days of that initial dig, screened as part of the 2003 series (Mosaics, mosaics, mosaics, 12 January 2003), the Team was only able to get a glimpse of its size and layout.
The site was so tantalising and puzzling that Time Team returned three years later, this time with live camera crews for the Big Roman Dig series of programmes, a week long exploration of Roman Britain screened in June 2005. The Big Roman Villa Time Team Special tells the story of how the Team brought to light one of the most important and previously unknown villas in Roman Britain.
Chance discovery
Time Team's involvement with the site at Dinnington began with a chance discovery. Farmer's daughter Trudy Ridgers had discovered a small piece of mosaic in one of her father's fields; later she found a number of other fragments. Time Team was called in to investigate.
An aerial photograph taken during one of the hot, dry summers in the mid-1970s revealed the clear outlines of what looked like a huge Roman villa, some 150 metres across. Time Team opened a few test pits in what turned out to be its west wing, and within a short time had revealed the first of a series of mosaics just a few inches beneath the surface. On the second day, 'the mosaics just kept on coming', as Tony Robinson put it, and Phil Harding also uncovered the remains of a hypocaust underfloor heating system with very fine mosaic tesserae that had collapsed into it. Another trench in the central range revealed the foundations of some very substantial walls – large enough to tell the archaeologists that they had supported a two-storey structure. This was clearly no ordinary building.
Finest found in Britain
The quality of some of the mosaic finds (some of the tesserae were just 5mm square) turned out to be as fine as anything ever found in Britain. But the site was too big and complex to be dealt with in an ordinary three-day Time Team dig. That would have to wait for a fuller excavation – an opportunity for which was to be provided by the Big Roman Dig three years later.
As well as uncovering what was left of the villa and its mosaics, Time Team wanted to find out how it had evolved over the centuries. The earliest Roman finds included a brooch dated at about 40-60 AD. This suggested that the first Roman building on the site – a farmhouse – was erected soon after the Roman conquest in 43 AD. Geophysics surveys revealed the existence of what turned out to be a driveway constructed later to connect a new villa complex with the Fosse Way, the ancient trackway serving the area.
Several phases of improvement
The first phase of the villa building was found to have been a timber construction, and the villa went through several phases of reconstruction and improvement before it reached its heyday. This was in the fourth century AD, which was when the best-quality mosaics were laid. Bone finds showed that the occupants of the villa enjoyed a luxury diet by the standards of the day that included beef and venison. Fine glass fragments and pottery finds revealed that they would have drunk and eaten from the best tableware. And pieces of elaborately decorated wall plaster gave an indication of the sumptuous surroundings in which they would have dined – even if Tony did describe it as 'fundamentally naff', or 'a bit Footballers' Wives', in the words of Time Team Roman expert Guy de la Bédoyère.
Stewart Ainsworth's investigation of the landscape around the villa, meanwhile, suggested that during this period the villa owners had turned a large area – more or less the entire area that could be seen from the villa – into private parkland. The occupants were clearly among the super rich of their day.
Decline and fall
It didn't last. The finest mosaics were found to have been laid around 320 AD. But in less than a century, the decline of Roman imperial power and the withdrawal of the legions from Britain had brought their good life to an end. The villa buildings continued to be used after the Romans left – there is evidence of activities including the storage of grain and brewing on the site. Towards the end of the fifth century AD, however, (radio carbon dating of burnt grain dates it to about 490 AD), a catastrophic fire destroyed the main buildings, bringing the roof and timbers crashing down.
Later Saxon settlers made use of what was left (there are post holes from a wooden partition driven through one of the mosaics), but the grandeur of the Roman villa complex was never regained. Instead, the remains were buried and forgotten – until a 20th-century farmer's daughter realised the significance of fragments that were turning up in her father's fields and called in Time Team to investigate what lay just beneath the surface.
Fishbourne Roman Palace and Gardens
Salthill Road
Fishbourne
Chichester
West Sussex PO19 3QR
Tel: 01243 785859
The remains of the north wing of the palace are enclosed within a cover building where there is the largest collection of in-situ mosaics in Britain, including the famous 'Cupid on a Dolphin' mosaic.
Corinium Museum
Park Street
Cirencester
Tel: 01285 655611
A welcoming and airy museum with one of the finest collections of antiquities from Roman Britain, including various mosaics and the famous Septimus Stone, featured on Time Team's Cirencester programme in the 2000 series, which records the restoration of a column to Jupiter by a governor called Septimus.
Bignor Roman Villa
Bignor
Pulborough
West Sussex RH20 1PH
Tel: 01798 869259
One of the less well-known Romano-British sites open to the public, the villa has a marvellous collection of mosaics. It is six miles north of Arundel, signposted from the A29 and the A285.
British Museum
The British Museum
Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DG
The British Museum has a number of fine Romano-British mosaics, including the early depiction of Christ found in the Hinton St Mary mosaic floor and the first- or second-century Leadenhall Street mosaic, featuring Bacchus on a tiger.
The British Museum also holds several of the mosaics removed during the original early 19th century excavation of the Roman villa at Withington, Gloucestershire, by Samuel Lysons, which Time Team revisited during the 2006 series.
Ancient Mosaics by Roger Ling (British Museum, 1998) paperback £12.99
Traces the history of mosaics and their regional variations from Hellenistic to early Christian times, including mosaic techniques and their relationship to ancient interior design.
Geometric Patterns from Roman Mosaics by Robert Field (Tarquin Publications, 1988) paperback £2.95
A compact and interesting guide.
Romano-British Mosaics by Alan McWhirr (Shire Publications, 1995) paperback £10
Illustrated guide to Roman-British mosaics in the popular Shire Archaeology series.
Roman Mosaics of Britain by David S Neal and Stephen R Cosh
Volume I: Northern England, including the Midlands and East Anglia (Society of Antiquaries, 2002) hardback £160
Volume II: South-west Britain (Society of Antiquaries, forthcoming 2006)
This comprehensive record of all the Roman mosaics ever found in Britain is being published by the Society of Antiquaries in four volumes. Volume 1, covering Northern Britain, was published in 2002; Volume II is due for publication in 2006; and the remaining two volumes are due to be published in the next few years.
Vitruvius: On Architecture translated by Frank Granger (Harvard University Press, 1996) hardback £12.95
Studied by architects from the Renaissance to the present, Vitruvius's book is an incredible DIY handbook ranging from recipes for plaster and paint to the aesthetic use of marble and the construction of siege engines. An invaluable reference for Time Team cameos and a guide to the styles and means of construction of Roman buildings that survive today.
Mosaic
Annual journal of the Association for the Study and Preservation of Roman Mosaics. Vol 27 includes the article 'Recreating the mosaic from Basildon Roman villa' by Steve Cosh. The recreation was carried out for Time Team as part of the excavation of a Roman villa at Lower Basildon for the 2001 series.
Channel 4 is not responsible for the content of third-party sites.
Unofficial Tony Robinson Website
www.unofficialtonyrobinsonwebsite.co.uk
This website, run by a Time Team fan and forum regular, contains photo and QuickTime VR galleries from both the 2002 and 2005 excavations at Dinnington. These are the work of Time Team soundman Steve Shearn and well worth checking out for some close-up views of the site.
Mosaics
Association for the Study and Preservation of Roman Mosaics (ASPROM)
www.asprom.org/index.html
The Association for the Study and Preservation of Roman Mosaics website offers a wide variety of materials relating to mosaics in Britain, including their design, construction and the buildings in which they have been discovered. There is a catalogue of every Roman mosaic discovered in Britain, as well as articles providing an insight into the relationship between mosaics and art, architecture, religion and history. ASPROM is supporting former English Heritage chief illustrator David Neal and Steve Cosh's project to catalogue and publish details of every Roman mosaic in Britain, further details of which can be found on its website.
The best and worst Roman mosaics in Britain
www.cix.co.uk/~archaeology/timeline/
roman/mosaics/mosaics.htm
Mosaics expert and illustrator David Neal has been working with Steve Cosh to produce a four-volume account of all the known mosaics in the country. Here they choose four of their best – and worst – Roman mosaics in Britain. This illustrated web page is an abridged version of an article that appeared in Current Archaeology 157, published in May 1998.
Recording Roman mosaics
www.asprom.org/publications/recording.html
How can Roman mosaics best be illustrated? Many mosaics are known only from photos (usually black and white), but they are difficult to photograph even under good conditions. Because of their size and situation, often only an oblique view is possible, and rarely can the entire mosaic be captured. Thus to get an overall idea of what an ancient mosaic looked like, the best solution is a painting to scale, together with photographic evidence, and this is the solution adopted in the forthcoming corpus of Romano-British mosaics by David Neal and Steve Cosh. This illustrated article gives a detailed account of the background to their work and the history of recording Roman mosaics in Britain.
The Romans in Britain: Roman mosaics
www.vicb.fsnet.co.uk/arc_roman_mosaics.htm
Good basic introduction to Roman mosaics, their design, construction, peculiarities and mistakes.
Roman mosaics gallery
www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/
romans/mosaic_gallery/index.shtml
Online gallery of mosaics from Fishbourne Roman Palace and Bignor Roman villa.
Piazza Armerina, Sicily
www.bluffton.edu/~sullivanm/
armerina/armerina.html
A large, early 4th-century Roman villa and estate in Sicily, the Piazza Armerina has many well-preserved mosaics that feature on this website.
Pyrrha's Roman pages
www.pyrrha.demon.co.uk/index.html
This website provides information on how a couple with classical enthusiasms made a Roman mosaic and garden. The site also contains an introduction to the Latin language, poetry and how to read Latin inscriptions.
Mosaic Workshop
www.mosaicworkshop.com/
acatalog/index.html
Shop: 1a Princeton Street
London WC1R 4AX
Tel: 020 7831 0889
Workshop: Unit B
443-449 Holloway Road
London N7 6LJ
Tel: 020 7263 2997
The Mosaic Workshop supplies materials and organises courses on mosaic-making.