Bibury Roman Villa: a Résumé of the Rescue Excavation by G.L

Trans. Bristol & Gloucestershire Archaeological Society 132 (2014), 47–66 Bibury Roman Villa: A Résumé of the Rescue Excavation by G.L. and E.A.T. Bishop, 1986–7 By BRYN WALTERS With contributions by M.A. COLE, E. PRICE, B. NYBERG and C. SIlvanUS INTRODUCTION Following the death of Elizabeth Ann Tindell Bishop in January 2007, her executors, along with the present writer, gathered together the archaeological material and notes which were stored at her home in Ampney Crucis near Cirencester. For many years Beth, as she was known to friends and colleagues, had worked with her husband, the late Leighton Bishop, on a variety of archaeological field projects in the area of the Cotswolds surrounding Cirencester. Beth was also a founding trustee of the Association for Roman Archaeology and was assistant editor of the publications for that organization. As Director of the ARA, the writer was asked by her executors to compile a report on one of the principal sites which the Bishops had worked on. The site, which is the subject of this paper, is the Roman complex on Fern Ground near Bibury Mill, located on an isthmus of land surrounded on its north, south and east sides by a hairpin loop of the River Coln, east of the picturesque village of Bibury in Gloucestershire (Fig.1). Stored at the Bishops’ home were a number of interesting items and artefacts which had been removed from the site at Bibury and which were considered as worthy of publication, as they suggested that the site may well be of greater significance than previously considered. This assumption was further confirmed by the geophysical surveys subsequently undertaken on the site by the Ancient Monuments Laboratory at English Heritage, who agreed to contribute them to the following report as Appendix B. Background A limited area in the field known as Fern Ground at Bibury, containing visible earthworks, has been scheduled as an ancient monument for some time (SAM 366; OS Nat. Grid SP 122065). A number of brief reviews of work undertaken at the site were penned by the Bishops (Bishop 1984; Bishop and Bishop 1987; Bishop 1988) and a further note appeared by the County Archaeological Officer (Wills 1989). References to the site in other earlier works are mentioned in the Bishops’ files, but these reflect very little systematic investigation. These include an early account in John Aubrey’s Monumenta Britannica, where a reference is made to a figured mosaic floor depicting human heads, revealed in 1666 near Bibury Court; and again in Camden’s Britannia of 1789 and in G.B. Witts’ Archaeological Handbook of the County of Gloucestershire, 1883. A reference to the Bibury mosaic floor was also made by Pointer in 1713, in his Account of a Roman Pavement lately found at Stunsfield in Oxfordshire 48 BRYN WALTERS Fig. 1. Site location (by G.L. Bishop). (Stonesfield), and the mosaic was also referred to by Stukeley. In 1912 Arthur Newman from Manchester reported in a letter (copy now in the site archive) how he instigated digging a series of 11 holes across the site in an unsuccessful attempt to locate the figured mosaic revealed in 1666. Collectively these form a rather poor record of casual antiquarian interest in what may have been a rather remarkable Roman villa. The Bishops maintained a watch on the Bibury site for many years. In 1984 they partly excavated a stone-lined culvert which had been exposed when a heavy limb of a beech tree fell at the edge of Mill Copse, causing the ground surface to collapse. Being associated with Romano- British material and aligned north-east/south-west, passing from Mill Copse, where considerable Romano-British material had been identified, the culvert was recorded as probably being Roman in origin (Glevensis, 1984). In 1986–7, alerted by the construction of a large house on Fern Ground, the Bishops were asked by the County Archaeological Officer to investigate the site. They opened an areac .80 m south- west of the scheduled area and 5 m from the south-east corner of the new house. The site selected for excavation was severely restricted, being confined within an area surrounded by large dumps of earth and stone extracted by the builders when cutting foundation trenches and levelling the upper slope prior to construction (Fig. 2). BIBUry ROMAN VILLA 49 Fig. 2. Location of excavation, south-east of New House (by G.L. Bishop). 50 BRYN WALTERS The rationale for this present paper is to publish a résumé of the field notes and plans of the Romano-British structure revealed by the Bishops in 1986–7, along with some of the material retained at their home, which the executors of Beth Bishop’s estate passed to the Corinium Museum archive in perpetuity. In the brief reviews published by Mrs Bishop (Bishop and Bishop 1988; Bishop 1988) she was critical of the lack of stringency exercised by English Heritage in protecting the site, especially in allowing the development of so large a house to take place adjacent to the known scheduled area without adequate archaeological work being undertaken in advance of construction. It cannot be ascertained whether her comments made any impression, but very soon afterwards, in 1989, 1991 and 1993, the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission Laboratory undertook a series of geophysical surveys across the scheduled site and the surrounding area in order to identify the extent of the Roman monument. The results of these surveys confirmed in far greater detail the area of suspected structures published by the Royal Commission on Historic Monuments England in 1976 (RCHME 1976, 14–15), as well as other possible Roman features covering a much larger area on all four sides of the scheduled area. The results of these surveys are included in this report as Appendix B (see also Cole et al. 1995). Small finds, incorporating the coins (Appendix A), pottery, iron, and bronze alloy recovered in 1986–7, were listed and annotated by Eddie Price of Frocester Court from the files, notes and records on the site, and several of the pieces were drawn for an intended future publication before being deposited with the Corinium Museum. Being generally unexceptional as a group of finds the pieces have not been included in this report, but the drawings have been deposited in the site archive with Corinium Museum. The large iron nail (SF3) was found stored at Ampney Crucis with some pottery in a separate box labelled with the Bishops’ code for the Bibury villa. The piece does not appear in the list of small finds from the 1986–7 excavation, but may have been a chance find from one of their other activities on the site. The stone pieces, which are the principal items in this report, were stored in the garden at Ampney Crucis and once again, though not all marked, annotated or referenced in the notes, they were all pointed out as originating from the Bibury villa by Mrs Bishop, both to her executors and the writer during her lifetime. The writer has no reason to doubt this information, especially as the site was almost certainly the only major Roman building that Leighton and Beth Bishop worked on independently. Also some of the pieces (SF1, 2 and 3) relate to the probable structural status of the main villa buildings to the east, while the tank (SF4) suggests that the site, being surrounded by a small river, may be related to the stone-lined water culvert identified by the Bishops in 1984, or to a system of field irrigation in the Roman period. The photographs of the Romano-British foundations revealed by the Bishops (not included in this publication) indicate an insubstantial construction suggestive of stone sills for a timber-framed structure, detached well away from the rear of the major villa building. Only the north-west corner of a building of undefined proportion and alignment was able to be exposed, but it may have respected the same south-east axis of the villa itself, identifiable on the geophysical survey. The excavation did reveal areas of two possible rooms, the rough stone slab and rubble floor of one being slightly higher than the other. It was within these two end rooms that several of the stone pieces recovered from Mrs Bishop’s garden were found. Several tesserae of various colours and sizes were recovered compacted in the floor surfaces, along with fragments of painted plaster and mortar. These, along with some of the stone artefacts in this report, are considered here to have been residual infill material, removed from the main villa buildings during a period of structural modification. The record photographs taken during construction of the modern house clearly indicate that the foundations for the new building did intrude into Romano-British levels, as well as a possible surface encroachment in the form of a very large stone embankment for a raised terrace. The Romano-British building, identified in 1986, had been constructed on a lower terrace, cut into the sloping ground below the one damaged by the modern BIBUry ROMAN VILLA 51 Fig. 3. Romano-British remains exposed (by E.G. Price). foundations. Fortunately, location plans of the excavation were prepared by Leighton Bishop (Figs. 1 and 2). Site drawings, again by Eddie Price, prepared for an intended publication during Mrs Bishop’s lifetime, were also located in store at Ampney Crucis, one of which is incorporated in this report (Fig. 3). The other original drawings, along with the Bishops’ files, notes and photographs, are deposited with the rest of the archive in the Corinium Museum.

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