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To view any of our past lectures please visit our YouTube channel.
Landscape of Curiosities: The Priors Hall Roman Villa Estate
by Paddy Lambert
The site at Priors Hall, Corby represents an extremely important discovery from the world of Roman Britain. Investigated between 2019 and 2021, the breathtakingly well-preserved remains investigated included a large and complex manufacturing zone associated with a Late Romano-British villa, the site of which was discovered in 2011 and has been left preserved in-situ.
Activity was centred around Mid to Late RB tile manufacture pottery manufacture on a large scale. The tileries and subsidiary structures were constructed within the shell of an earlier stone structure, the evidence of which suggests it may be an early Roman mausoleum structure, associated with the first phases of the villa and its inhabitants. The results of this excavation won the Current Archaeology Award 2021 for ‘Rescue Project of the Year’.
Further excavations in 2021 around the villa estate uncovered evidence for the early second century villa. These included the progenitor Iron Age settlement, two well-preserved Roman roads, pottery manufacture and more. These excavations place Romano-British villas in appropriate wider contexts of function, social and economic networks. The panoply of objects and features helps to tell a story of a Romano-British villa from the bottom up. The stories of the tilers, carpenters, potters, and tradespeople who lived and worked in their shadow.
Its rarity, novelty, and its potential to significantly contribute to Romano-British economic and rural studies marks Priors Hall as somewhere rather special.
Paddy Lambert is a Project Officer for Oxford Archaeology with a specialist interest in the history and material culture of the Roman world, particularly the strange little province of Britannia. He ran the excavations at Priors Hall.
Image: Priors Hall Tileworks Reconstruction (M.Gridley)
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