Rudston Roman villa

Rudston Roman villa stands in a quiet field near the village of Rudston in the East Riding of Yorkshire. It is a Romano-British courtyard villa built between the 3rd and 4th centuries AD. The site includes mosaics and a small bath house on its east side. Earlier traces of an Iron Age settlement lie beneath the villa. A rectangular enclosure from the 1st–2nd centuries AD has also been recognised. The villa’s importance comes from its mosaics and the work of local farmer H. Robson. In 1933 Robson found the Venus mosaic while ploughing and later built a shed to show it. By the 1960s frost had damaged the mosaics, so they were moved to Hull and East Riding Museum in 1963. Another mosaic, the Charioteer, was uncovered in 1971 and shows a quadriga from the 4th century AD. Visitors today see the villa’s grassy outlines and a small shelter marking where the mosaics once lay. The site is quiet, with only a few information boards explaining what stood there. The surrounding fields stretch out, giving a sense of the rural landscape the villa once occupied. The mosaics themselves are no longer on site but remain preserved in Hull. The villa’s remains show how ordinary people lived in Roman Britain.