CDAS’s first major independent dig, near Warblington, Hampshire, has succeeded in identifying extensive remains of a major Roman villa. Some 45 members took part in the two-week excavation, directed by Jonathan Dicks, chairman of the society’s Field Committee.

   Extensive geophysical surveys by CDAS within Chichester Harbour’s Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty for the Harbour Conservancy revealed the site, and permission for a limited dig was given by the land owner, Havant District Council, the tenant farmer, and the Hampshire County Archaeologist.

   Although the presence of a Roman building in the area has been known for many years, the exact site and size were only revealed by resistivity and magnetometry surveys by the CDAS survey teams within the last two years.

   Only five trenches were permitted and time restraints reduced that to four. Even so, the accuracy of geophysical survey enabled the main objects of the investigation to be achieved. The western wall was confirmed in three trenches and in one it was possible to detect that an inner wall of one of the seven or eight westerly rooms was butted on to the substantial north-south wall of the larger villa rooms, suggesting that the westerly range was a later addition to the original villa. The most southerly trench revealed part of an in situ ceramic tiled floor, possibly part of a bathhouse.

   Many fragments of Roman ceramic building material were found in the plough soil, including 27 kilograms of tesserae of various sizes – which sadly indicates that most floors are likely to have been ploughed up. Of the walls uncovered little more than the foundations remain. However enough pottery fragments survive, chiefly in a trench where magnetometry had indicated a ditch. The pottery from the two ditches would seem to suggest that the site was occupied from the Late Iron Age through until at least the mid fourth century AD.