Conisbrough Parks Romano-British Villa

Summary

The core of a Romano-British villa with some evidence that the site continued in use into the early post-Roman period. Mainly survives as buried archaeological remains of buildings, including a bathhouse suite, mostly arranged around a courtyard, but with additional structures outside.

Reasons for Designation

Conisbrough Parks Romano-British villa is included on the Schedule for the following principal reasons:

* Period: as a good example of a Romano-British villa, a highly characteristic site type for the Roman period, with interesting evidence of likely occupation extending into the early post-Roman period;
* Rarity: one of the very small number of villas to be identified in Yorkshire, the vast majority of villas being found in southern England;
* Potential: geophysical survey indicates that the monument includes a complete courtyard complex together with outlying features, the 1980s small-scale excavations demonstrated good archaeological survival including deeply buried deposits indicating that the monument retains significant archaeological potential.

History

Romano-British villas were extensive rural estates at the focus of which were groups of domestic, agricultural and occasionally industrial buildings. The term "villa" is now commonly used to describe either the estate or, as in this case, the principal building complex. The buildings usually include a well-appointed dwelling house, the design of which varies considerably according to the needs, taste and prosperity of the occupier. Most of the houses were partly or wholly stone-built. Roofs were generally tiled and the house could feature tiled or mosaic floors, underfloor heating, wall plaster, glazed windows and cellars. Many had integral or separate suites of heated baths. The house was usually accompanied by a range of buildings providing accommodation for farm labourers, workshops and storage for agricultural produce. These were arranged around or alongside a courtyard and were surrounded by a complex of paddocks, pens, yards and features such as vegetable plots, granaries, threshing floors, wells and hearths, all approached by tracks leading from the surrounding fields. Villa buildings were constructed throughout the period of Roman occupation, from the first to the fourth centuries AD. They are usually complex structures occupied over several hundred years and continually remodelled to fit changing circumstances. They could serve a wide variety of uses alongside agricultural activities, including administrative, recreational and craft functions, and this is reflected in the considerable diversity in their plan. The least elaborate villas served as simple farmhouses whilst, for the most complex, the term "palace" is not inappropriate. Villa owners tended to be drawn from a limited elite section of Romano-British society. Although some villas belonged to immigrant Roman officials or entrepreneurs, the majority seem to have been in the hands of wealthy natives with a more-or-less Romanised lifestyle, and some were built directly on the sites of Iron Age farmsteads. Roman villa buildings are widespread, with between 400 and 1000 examples recorded nationally, with most examples being found in southern England, identified examples in Yorkshire are very much rarer.

Roman villas provide a valuable index of the rate, extent and degree to which native British society became Romanised, as well as indicating the sources of inspiration behind changes of taste and custom. In addition, they serve to illustrate the agrarian and economic history of the Roman province, allowing comparisons over wide areas both within and beyond Britain. Sites with evidence of domestic occupation continuing into the early post-Roman period also shed valuable light on continuity and change following the final withdrawal of Roman forces from Britain in the early C5.

Conisbrough Parks Romano-British villa was identified in 1984 and investigated by small-scale amateur archaeological excavation up until 1991, being published 2006 (M Grant). These excavations were mainly focused on investigating the well-preserved remains of a multi-roomed stone-built Roman bath house retaining remains of a hypocaust, including some intact flooring; evidence of both hot and cold plunge baths, the latter retaining decoratively painted plasterwork; and evidence that the bath house fell into disuse, probably in the later C4, its ruins reused for small-scale craftworking of non-ferrous metal, with evidence of iron smelting also found immediately south of the building. Two sample excavation trenches also identified a large aisled building arranged at right angles with the bath house. This appears to have been timber-framed on stone footings, with evidence of wattle and daub, plaster and window glass, this suggesting that it was, at least partly, a domestic part of the villa. The southern wall-line of the aisled building was cut by a pit that probably represents a sunken-floored building: a small building known as a grubenhaus suggesting continued domestic occupation of the site into the post-Roman period.

The excavation was recorded with detailed plans, backed by photography and written context records. The excavator suggested that, in use, the hypocaust had structural issues with the heat degrading the sandstone used to build the pilea (pillars supporting the floor surfacing) leading to some parts of the hypocaust being deliberately deconstructed and the space infilled up to the original floor level. The find of a coin of the Emperor Constantine I (337-350) within a thin layer of charcoal appearing to represent the last firing of the hypercaust suggests that the bath house probably went out of use in the mid-late C4. Other finds included pottery, including both locally produced and imported items such as Samian ware, along with a typical range of animal bone and other small finds.

In 2003 the site was investigated via geophysics with a resistivity survey. This clearly identified the bath house as forming the western side of a courtyard villa complex with an aisled building on both the north and south sides of the courtyard, the east side enclosed by a wall line. The survey also indicated other potential structures outside of the courtyard complex within the monument.

Details

PRINCIPAL ELEMENTS: Romano-British villa complex arranged around a courtyard including a stone-built, multi-roomed bath house, all surviving as buried archaeological remains with minimal upstanding earthworks.

DESCRIPTION: the monument lies on a relatively level area of ground on a wider, gentle, north-west facing slope overlooked by a hilltop some 50m higher, 0.5km to the south-east, the northern side of this hilltop now being occupied by the village of Clifton. The northern and south-western corners of the area are marked by short, steeper slopes, the north-west side by a former railway cutting.

Geophysical survey indicates that the villa complex is arranged around a courtyard some 30m by 20m, extending to the east of the bath house with aisled buildings enclosing the north and south sides of the courtyard. Sample excavation in the 1980s suggested that at least part of this courtyard was cobbled. The west side of the courtyard is enclosed by the bath house, the east side appears to have been enclosed with a wall.

The bath house was shown via excavation to be about 8m by 17m, divided into six rooms. Its general area can be just seen as a very slight upstanding earthwork. Excavation found that the top of the in situ archaeological deposits were around 10cm below the modern ground surface but that these extended down to over 2m deep in some areas. This included walling, which was left in situ, standing to around 1m high buried beneath the modern ground surface. The principal entrance appears to have been on the side facing the courtyard giving access into a room about 3m by 4m which was formerly heated but where the hypocaust had been deconstructed and infilled. This room, identified as the apodyterium (undressing room) was latterly used for non-ferrous metalworking as demonstrated by the identification of a hearth, crucible fragments and other deposits. The slightly larger room to the west, identified as the caldarium (hot damp room) retained some intact hypocausted flooring along with evidence indicating that there was a hot plunge bath at its northern end, heated via the furnace room that occupied the northern third of the building. The furnace room was latterly subdivided with an inserted wall to create a higher-status room with plastered walls, this room being north of the apodyterium. To the south of the caldarium, is the laconium (warm dry room) which is around 3m by 3m, extended southwards by a further metre into an apse. The hypocaust flooring of this room appears to have failed, being later infilled. To the east is a similar sized room identified as the frigidarium (cold room), a cold plunge bath occupying the southern apse, this retaining evidence of a painted plaster finish depicting trout. This room, designed to be unheated, had no hypocaust, but instead was floored with sandstone flagstones. The walls of the building were also constructed of sandstone, with evidence that this was externally rendered. The excavation identified evidence of iron smelting immediately to the south of the bath house. To the north of the bath house, the geophysical survey indicated the presence of a further structure approximately 8m by 6m, the surveyor suggesting that this, being next to the furnace room, was likely to have been the fuel store.

The aisled building forming the south side of the courtyard to the east of the bath house was also shown by excavation to retain in situ archaeological remains likely to have been part of the villa’s domestic accommodation, because of the finds of window glass and wall plaster. The excavation also identified a rectangular hollow 2m across by at least 3m long that has been subsequently interpreted as the remains of a grubenhaus, a sunken-floored building, a characteristic early post-Roman structure. The geophysical survey indicates that the aisled building extends around 30m east-west by 12m wide. A very slight undulation in the ground surface may mark the location of this building. The similarly sized building lying on the north side of the courtyard and the feature interpreted as a boundary wall on the east side, both identified via geophysics, have not been sampled by excavation.

The geophysics also indicated evidence of further structures and features outside of the courtyard complex including an area around 10m by 14m centred 30m east of the south-east corner, possibly including another building and a possible 4m by 4m paved area just east of the northern aisled building.

AREA OF MONUMENT: this is the northern triangle of a larger field, an area which has previously been left uncultivated and was surveyed by geophysics in 2003. The boundary of a former railway line marks the north-western side and a footpath runs along the north-eastern side; the east-west boundary on the south side is 130m south of the northern apex of the triangle. The northern apex of the triangle, 15m north-south, which lies at the foot of a steeper slope, is excluded from the monument because it an area of increased erosion adjacent to gateways where there is currently no evidence of archaeological remains.

This monument is designed to include the full known extent of the villa complex, however currently unidentified Roman archaeological remains may extend beyond the boundaries. In the wider area of the surrounding fields, pottery scatters suggest that there may be surviving Romano-British structures outlying from the core of the villa forming this monument.

EXCLUSIONS: fence lines along the boundaries of the monument lie immediately outside the area of the scheduling.

This list entry was subject to a Minor Amendment on 10 November 2025 to amend details in the description and to reformat text to current standards

Sources

Other
M Grant 'Conisbrough Parks Romano-British Villa Excavation Report' (2006) (Typescript report held by South Yorkshire Historic Environment Record)

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