A walk after lunch to the Roman villa

My regular Saturday dreamwork workshop was held again today in Woodchester village hall, about two miles to the south of Stroud. It is usually held for one day every two months with a small group of seven regulars meeting with Maggie to explore our personal stories or narratives. I love it. Today several people couldn't attend, but we had a very good and more intimate meeting. We all bring food which we share together, and after lunch I decided to go for a short fifteen minute walk to get some fresh air and I headed towards the old graveyard a couple of hundred yards away.

The weather had brightened enormously and I really liked being at the bottom of the river valley running down from Nailsworth, through Woodchester to join the river Frome at Stroud. Just under two thousand years ago one of the most important Roman villas in Britain was built on this site. It was discovered about 1790 when new graves were being dug in the local church graveyard. They dug up tesserae from a huge mosaic and over the next century other excavations revealed the enormous scale of the villa, and the incredibly important mosaic of Orpheus which lay nearly intact just below the surface of the graveyard.

The flat open ground to the right of the picture shows where it is sited, because after it was last revealed in all its glory in the 1970s, it was re-buried beneath this soil in what remained of the graveyard. Measuring about 48 feet square it is thought to be the second largest in Britain. The villa had 65 rooms and is now thought to have been the hone to the Roman Governor of the region, whose key city centres were at Glevum (Gloucester) and Corinium (Cirencester) both about twelve miles away from Woodchester.

From the local historical society website:
The Romans occupied Woodchester from the 2nd Century AD. Evidence of their buildings from that period were found on the site of the villa which was erected in 4th century. The villa contained the largest known roman pavement (mosaic) north of the Alps. It was first recorded in 1693 and first excavated 1712. Lysons made his famous and detailed excavation in 1793 and it is a print from his painting of the pavement that we see in the Village hall and in many publications about the pavement such as John Cull’s excellent description of the villa in “Roman Woodchester”. Although the villa is no longer visible on the surface there are some roman bricks can be seen in the old church and stone roman culverts are visible in the wall around the Old Priory Grounds.

Dark Ages and Medieval
In the 6th Century the Saxons arrived and plundered the villa to build their village, Uuduceaster “Fortress in the wood”. At this time it was probably a sheep farming area. By the time of King Athebald (716 -743), Uuduceaster was part of the Kingdom of Mercia and when the Normans arrived in 1066, according to the Domesday Book, Woodchester belonged to Britric, and was part of the Longtree Hundred in the lands of the Earl of Gloucester. The Norman Manor House was on the site of the Old Priory and there is evidence of a medieval building near the old church and a Tithe Barn higher up the valley slopes on Selsley Road.