Southwick Roman villa

The Southwick Roman villa stands on a field near the village of Southwick in West Sussex. It was a large Roman country house built in the first century and occupied until the third. The remains were first uncovered in 1815, when excavators exposed some floors without recording their work. Further unrecorded digs in 1847 revealed at least four rooms, mosaics and wall paintings before the site was sold for housing in 1930. Archaeologists S. Winbolt and Salmon later excavated most of the villa in 1931, though a road had already cut through its southern edge. The house was arranged around a peristyl, with living rooms to the north, a dining room to the east facing the entrance, and a basilica in the south. Finds of gilded tesserae show it was once richly decorated, and its size and layout suggest it belonged to high-ranking Roman officials. Visitors today see the low earthworks of the villa’s walls and the layout of its rooms. The site lies within a modern housing estate, so access is quiet and unobtrusive. The remains give a clear sense of the villa’s grand scale and its central peristyl court. Though little is visible above ground, the outlines mark where once stood a palace-like residence for Roman officials in Roman Britain.