All Things Roman

Sherborne villager may recall a few years ago the find of a Romano-British grain dryer during an archaeological excavation near Stones Farm, indicating a serious presence here.

The Sherborne Archives were kind enough to show me the item below, which they rightly suspect to be a roman terracotta fragment, found at some point in the past, elsewhere in the village:

The piece of terracotta has been grooved with some sort of comb with perhaps six or seven “teeth”.

I did a bit of a search and found these links:

1. What can we learn from Roman flue tiles
2. Roman Box flue tiles found in Somerset.
3. Roman Hypocaust flue tile found in Hampshire

These very similar pieces of terracotta seem to clearly suggest that the Sherborne fragment is from the flue of a hypocaust, the Romano-British method of ”central heating” where hot air was circulated under a floor and up the sides of walls in flues to provide high-status Romano-British citizens with the comfort of a modern home. By “high status” I think that might imply a “Villa” somewhere under our feet in the village of Sherborne itself, almost certainly a different structure from the other Roman sites discussed recently. I think that’s exciting.

Tell me what you think. Tell me where you think this Villa might have been. And keep your eyes peeled when you dig out your spuds.

Many thanks to the Sherborne Archives for sharing this - they deserve our support.