Villa Rustica (Combley)

The Villa Rustica at Combley is a Roman farmhouse ruin on the Isle of Wight. It lies inside the Robin Hill Adventure Park and Gardens near Arreton. The site was first noticed in the mid-19th century. Archaeologists dug here in 1910–11 and again from 1968 to 1975. The main building probably dates from the late 2nd century AD and had an earlier predecessor. The remains show a three-aisled hall with a large western section divided into three main rooms and one smaller one. These rooms were almost certainly the living quarters. At the far west end a former simple house had been turned into a bath suite, unusually large for a villa of this size. Two rooms still preserve mosaics: one in the main hall with geometric and stylised floral patterns, and another in the baths showing geometric shapes plus two dolphins. Coins found nearby suggest the villa was abandoned around AD 350. Visitors walk past the roofless walls and see the mosaic floors still in place. The geometric hall mosaic lies near the centre of the ruin. The bath mosaic, with its dolphin figures, is closer to the western edge. Other unexcavated buildings once stood around the villa, their outlines now grassed over. The site sits among the modern adventure park’s lawns and woodland, so the Roman stones appear beside picnic tables and adventure playgrounds.