SNN109191 - Excavation at Stanion Roman Villa, Brigstock Road, Northamptonshire April to July 2010

Northamptonshire Archaeology undertook an archaeological excavation as part of a proposed development of a waste recycling facility. The excavation revealed a late Iron Age boundary and two timber roundhouses that may have continued in use to the late 1st century AD. This early activity was related to iron smelting on an industrial scale. In the late 1st century there was minor rebuilding in stone and by the early 2nd century a small villa with tessellated pavements had been constructed. This building had been partly excavated in 2002. In the later 2nd century two further buildings, which probably functioned as ancillary ranges, were constructed. The original building was demolished during the same period or just afterwards and it seems likely that this was part of a wider expansion and modification of the villa complex, most of which lay to the north. To the east a stone-built roundhouse was constructed. A droveway defined by parallel ditches led to a partially metalled road. In the 3rd century a working yard to the south of the buildings included a post-built aisled barn with oven, a large malting oven, stone-lined wells and water cistern. The ancillary buildings, the processing area and the droveway appear to have gone out of use by the late 3rd century, when a series of ditches, some utilised for animal stock control, were created and an oven was inserted into the demolition deposits of one of the buildings. The site appears to have been abandoned in the 4th century AD. During the medieval period the site was unoccupied; but a small amount of medieval pottery recovered from the building rubble suggests post-Conquest robbing of the villa for building stone. Medieval cultivation was shown by remnants of ridge and furrow.