Litlington looks like the quintessential English village, but buried at its heart could be something a little more unexpected - a palatial Roman villa. A dig 180 years ago produced a plan of a huge Roman building in a field alongside the main street. Could there be one of the grandest villas in England hidden in this quiet part of Cambridgeshire?
According to the plan our villa should be over 200m across and located in the centre of an empty paddock. Surely this would be easy for the geophysics team - big chunky walls to find and an open space to work in. There were some surprised faces when the results revealed absolutely nothing. According to the data there was no Roman structure to be seen anywhere on the site.
Despite the geophysics we knew there had to be a Roman building here somewhere because over the years buckets of Roman finds had been discovered, many of which came from a small copse south of the main site. Phil fought his way in to the centre of the thicket to open the first trench. Within minutes he had uncovered a tessellated pavement and it was definitely part of a villa, but where was the rest of it?
The antiquarian plan that had led us here had to be inaccurate and Stewart tried to work out just how wrong it was. After careful plotting, measuring and drawing he calculated that instead of sitting in the empty field the villa must be further south - completely covered by modern houses.
A change of strategy was needed if we were going to find this elusive building. To try and pin down its location we began digging test pits in the back gardens we suspected may overlie the villa. Hopefully the spread of Roman finds in the test pits would give us an idea of the size and location of the building. It was a strategy that required the co-operation of the village and thankfully the people of Litlington had no objections to us digging up their immaculate lawns!
Despite the setback in finding the villa, it wasn't the only thing we were looking for. The antiquarian plan also showed a Roman cemetery a few hundred metres away to the south and we wanted to see if it still survived. Our map had already proved inaccurate once; would we have better luck this time? John Gater surveyed the new target and was certain he could see a cemetery in the results. A series of trenches went in to see if we could re-locate the burial ground.
Back on the villa site things were finally starting to make sense. After opening 11 test pits we had uncovered in situ Roman remains in several of the back gardens. Stewart planned out the discoveries revealing the size and location of the villa. In the north west corner was Phil's tessellated pavement, part of a bath house, and spreading out to the south east from there was the rest of the building.
Our search for the cemetery was also starting to produce results. Matt had uncovered part of a Roman mausoleum marked on the plan along with a Roman burial. It seemed that most burials had been excavated in the 19th century but at least we had confirmed the cemetery location.
After three confusing, frustrating and finally successful days we had found the missing villa of Litlington. Many of the village residents now know that under their flower beds sits part of an Empire that ruled Britain almost 2000 years ago.
