More information : [SO 5415 1728]. Tesselated Pavement found. [TI] (1)
The first notice of this site appears to have been in Lewis' Topo. Dictionary. (2) The fifth edition (1845) gives under 'Whitchurch':- 'A tessellated pavement has been discovered which is supposed to have been part of a Roman bath, and several Roman coins have been found in the neighbourhood', and the first close siting is by Wright (3) in 1852:- 'On the boundary where these two parishes (Whitchurch & Ganarew) join, in a meadow on the right hand side of the road to Monmouth where the surface presents considerable inequality, I am informed that traces of a Roman Villa have been found, but is has not been explored.' Thompson Watkin (4) (1877) gives only these two authorities in his reference, and relates the coins to the pavement, which is clearly not Lewis' intention and is not done by Wright. Other sources - VCH,(5) RCHM, (6) Bull, (7) Haverfield, (8), Jack (9) and Dudley (10) - do no more than copy, with or without acknowledgement, from one or all of these three, mostly repeating the erroneous association of the coins, but a piece of apparently original siting information occurs in the account of a Field Meeting of the Woolhope Society (11) in 1900:-
'Quitting Lewstone [in the direction of Whitchurch] the locality was pointed out in a field at the bottom of the hill of the discovery of some Roman tessellated pavement, and still nearer Whitchurch the site of an ancient bloomery as testified by discoveries of smelted iron ore.' (12)
The Original ONB was destroyed in the 1939 war, but the site has been consistently published at SO 5415 1728 on the 1st (1877) and subsequent editions of 25" and 6" and must represent authoriative local opinion in the late 19th c. In 1956 N.P. Bridgewater (13) of Ross-on-Wye probed the published site without success, and the swampy nature of the gorund led him to suppose that the pavement could not have been at that spot. A.M. Lumsdaine, (14) another local man, investigated the site in 1958 and was of the same opinion. He made nine borings with a large auger to a depth of 7 ft. and found no evidence of a building.
The published site hardly answers to Wright's description. It is 400 m. from the parish boundary and 300 metres from the road to Monmouth. The parish boundary has certainly not altered since 1877 (1st Ed. 6"), and 'on the right hand side of the road' in Wright's context implies a near proximity. A position on the NW side of the road between Wych and Crocker's Ash appears to be indicated (i.e. at about SO 539 168). Other possibilities have been suggested by Messrs Bridgewater and Lumsdaine, but on rather slight evidence, except for the site at SO 545171 (SO 51 NW 3) where Roman pottery and slag floors and two tesserae are reported. This might well be the correct site, as although the Woolhope Club recognised it as distinct from the pavement on OS maps for 23 years. (2-14)
Site of published symbol visited with Mr Lumsdaine who pointed out the positions of his bore holes. The swampy ground is not likey to be a merely modern happening and it appears most unsuitable for a Roman or any other building. The evidence from the borings seems to be final proof that the OS site is wrong. (15)
(SO 54151728) Roman Villa (R) (Site of) (16)
Ground inspection supports the siting at SO 539168 derived from Wright's siting evidence, in preference to the low-lying OS published (1924) siting. It falls in arable land upon the lower NE slopes of a ridge which rises south-westwards from Whitchurch. No further finds are known of from the area. (17)
HE 21 Listed as the possible site of a Roman villa. (18)
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