Villa rustica (Sparsholt)
The Villa Rustica von Sparsholt is a Roman manor house ( Villa rustica ) about 6.5 kilometers west of Venta Belgarum , today's Winchester . Sparsholt in the English county of Hampshire is the closest place today.
Roman remains were suspected here as early as 1890. Extensive excavations took place from 1965 to 1972 and 1985. The complex consisted of a large walled courtyard with buildings on three sides. The entrance gate stood on the east side. The building opposite on the west side was the residential building with a portico and corner projections . This building was richly decorated with mosaics . Several rooms had a simple red stone floor. The portico showed a meander pattern in red and gray. The central main room of the house had a well-preserved mosaic with a circle in the center and various geometric or stylized plant patterns. This main building probably dates to the end of the third century AD. The other two buildings probably originally served economic purposes. In the northern building, however, a bath was built into it in the fourth century AD. Extensive remains of wall paintings were found in this building. One of them showed a painted mosaic and dates to the first century AD and thus to a previous building. Other paintings from the villa show busts and date to the fourth century AD.
The villa was filled in after the excavations. One building has been reconstructed in the Butser Ancient Farm , an open-air museum.
literature
- Norman Darvey, Roger Ling: Wall painting in Roman Britain. Alan Sutton, Gloucester 1982, ISBN 0-904387-96-8 , pp. 158-165.
- David S. Neal, Stephen R. Cosh: Roman Mosaics of Britain, Volume III, South-East Britain , Part I, London 2009, ISBN 978-0-85431-289-4 , pp. 239-242.
Web links
Coordinates: 51 ° 4 ′ 6.8 " N , 1 ° 24 ′ 34.9" W.