Minster Roman Villa 2002

The KAS continued its annual excavation at the important Roman villa at Minster on the Isle of Thanet. This year’s programme was designed to consolidate previous work and tidy up various loose ends. The digging team was saddened to learn that the long-standing director, Dave Perkins, would not be well enough to lead the team this year. Instead, the investigations were directed by Keith Parfitt, ably assisted, as usual, by Emma Boast, Tim Allen and Geoff Cody, with Dave Perkins keenly following developments from his hospital bed.

A total of thirty separate trenches was excavated. The bulk of these was aimed at tracing the line of the villa enclosure wall which surrounded the main house and its adjacent bath-building (see plan on page 3). These others were designed to examine significant areas located by geophysical survey. In the course of extending a new, previously unknown building was located outside the south-eastern corner of the villa enclosure (Building 6). It seems likely that this is more Building 4, previously excavated at the south-east corner. Preliminary investigation established the presence of at least two rooms with a tesserae, opus signinum and painted wall plaster. It is hoped to return to excavate this important structure in a future season.

Work on the main villa house was confined to the re-exposure of the central part of the main range. This was to allow all wall lines to be re-surveyed more accurately and also to take another look at the problem at the hypocaust room at the back of the range. Re-surveying confirmed that the house was not precisely laid out, with several corners that are not true right-angles.

Photo: Richard Hookland

Evidence for a gateway was located in the middle of the south side of the villa enclosure wall. This was represented by two very large post-pits, each containing traces of a curvilinear post-pipe. A gateway about 3m there wide is suggested. A shallow ditch running between the post-pits seemed to represent the position of a sill beam doorstop of timber. Rough metalling extended north and south of the entrance and must provide evidence for a road. Metalling produced a large silver coin of Septimus Severus (dated to A.D. 201) and suggests that the road was not laid before the start of the third century.

Immediately to the north of the north wall of the villa enclosure a large shaft was located. This was oval in shape and measured 4.70m (E-W) by 2.75m (N-S). It was excavated to a maximum depth of 2.0m but the base was not reached. The filling produced quantities of late first-early second century pottery, including box and flanges; also building debris, including painted wall plaster. It is hoped to return and complete the excavation of this shaft next year.

An open sequence of other large pits and ditches was located outside the villa boundary wall to the north of the main house. The ditches are likely to relate to a more extensive system of ditched fields and enclosures around the villa. These may perhaps originally have been dug as clay quarries. The filling of both the pits and ditches produced significant quantities of pottery, painted plaster and other domestic debris.

Geophysical survey of the field continued, under the supervision of Castle and Brian M’aughton, in an effort to locate significant buried remains without having to dig for them. Local metal detectorists were able to join the project this year and spent in many hours searching spoilheaps and areas outside the excavation. This resulted in the recovery of about thirty Roman coins and other artefacts.

An all-team was able to make good start processing on site the great numbers of finds produced by the 2002 excavations. Of particular interest, this year was the large number of finely painted wall plaster recovered from pits located to the north of the main house.

The excavations at Minster will be published in instalments within the pages of Archaeologia Cantiana. Work on the first report is now nearing completion.

Keith Parfitt