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In Latin, the word 'villa' means simply 'farm', but archaeologists generally mean something grander when they talk of Roman villas. Yet the villas of Roman Britain – of which more than 600 have been excavated – were working farms, sometimes with 'industrial' activities such as pottery or metalworking going on as well. They might be thought of as country estates, or centres of rural industry and farming, employing significant numbers of labourers and servants and applying highly organised methods of agriculture to the native peasant economy.
Most Roman villas are built close to towns, and even closer to the main Roman roads. Their inhabitants were not in fact Romans, in the sense of coming from Rome, but usually the native tribal aristocracy adapting to Roman ways of life. This means they tend to be concentrated in southern and midland England, in areas where the native tribes were most friendly. They are much rarer, for example, in the north, where the Brigantes tribe was never properly 'Romanised'.
The 'golden age' of the Romano-British villa was in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD, when they achieved heights of elegance and luxury to compare with anywhere in the empire. Many had their own separate bath houses. Underfloor heating systems seem to have been present in virtually all of them.
Individual villas differed but in general they were one-storey, half-timber-frame structures built on stone foundations (these are what survive beneath the surface today). They would be roofed with clay or slate tiles. Floors were often tiled, some of them with elaborate mosaics. Walls were plastered and decorated either with plain colours or painted scenes. Furniture was made of wood, often following the latest fashions in Rome. Pottery might be made locally or imported over sometimes great distances.
Villas fell into disuse after the departure of the Roman legions at the beginning of the 5th century. The Anglo-Saxon invaders built in wood, ran a different kind of agricultural economy and preferred to locate their houses and settlements away from the old Romano-British villas.