Monument record TR 36 SW 486 - Roman building (Building 6) - Minster Roman Villa
Summary
Location
Grid reference | Centred TR 3135 6456 (21m by 28m) (14 map features) |
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Map sheet | TR36SW |
County | KENT |
District | THANET, KENT |
Civil Parish | MINSTER, THANET, KENT |
Map
Type and Period (3)
Full Description
The main villa buildings of Minster Roman Villa were set either inside or around a large rectangular walled enclosure. Situated immediately outside the south-west comer of the walled enclosure lay Building 6 which was one of a pair of structures located at the southern end of the villa enclosure wall, some 80m downhill to the south of the main villa house. Building 6 was first located during extensive trenching undertaken across the site in 2002. It was fully excavated over the next two seasons, with the northern half being examined in 2003 and the southern half in 2004. The building remains were the most complicated encountered anywhere at Minster and it eventually emerged that they actually related to two separate, successive, structures occupying the same plot. Building 6B, was a simple one phase structure but the earlier Building 6A was larger and rather more complicated, probably with at least three phases of development and included a bath-suite. This was a stone structure aligned N-S, following the natural fall of the ground between the 12 and 13m contours. Like Building 4 at the south-east corner, it does not appear to belong to the primary phase of villa construction because it was butted onto the outside of the preexisting villa enclosure wall. It was also partially built across an infilled ditch. In its final form, Building 6A contained a total of thirteen separate rooms (Nos 32-44). All the walls had been taken down to foundation level and virtually no associated floor-levels or occupation layers survived, although some useful assemblages of finds were recovered from the fillings of the robbed hypocaust basements.
The first phase of building 6A consisted of a simple, rectangular, two-roomed structure butted directly onto the outside of the pre-existing south villa enclosure wall, and which measured some 14.50m (N-S) by 6.00m (E-W). A cross-wall divided this block into two rooms of unequal size. The foundations were constructed from alternate layers of rammed chalk rubble and small black pebbles with crushed marine shell. The exact purpose of Building 6A during Phase 1 remains uncertain. Like Building 4. it seems most probable that it was a simple two-roomed domestic structure, perhaps for the accommodation of slaves or other workers who needed to be housed outside the main villa enclosure. At some later stage, the Phase 1 structure underwent a major programme of alteration, which saw the addition of several extra rooms and the construction of a new hypocaust system with associated furnace and stoke pit, within the original building. These changes were apparently associated with the conversion of Building 6A into a bath building, provided with a small heated bath-suite and other rooms which need not have been directly connected with the new baths. Two separate rooms were added on the eastern side with two more along the south. Within the Building 6 A baths, functions for the individual rooms may be suggested with varying degrees of certainty. Thus, Room 34 immediately adjacent to the furnace, was clearly the Hot Bath, whilst the slightly larger adjacent Room 35 must have served as the Hot Room To the south of this, Room 44, although unheated, could perhaps have been the Warm Room (tepidarium), with Room 38 to its east as the Cold Room (frigidarium). To the north. Room 37 might have functioned as the Undressing Room (apodvterium), perhaps situated adjacent to the main entrance into the building. Room 41a could have contained a projecting cold plunge-bath (surface-built). A second enlargement of Building 6A subsequently occurred with the addition of a range of five more rooms along the south and west sides of the existing structure. Three of the new rooms were sunken (Rooms 41-43) and must relate to another hypocaust system, unconnected with that previously constructed during Phase 2. Some evidence for the water supply and drainage works associated with the Building 6A baths was recorded. Of two large pits located a short distance to the west of the building. one was certainly a timber-lined well and the other probably so. Waste-water was taken from the baths by means of a ditch, remodelled several times and at some stage containing lengths of stone-lined channel (see above) and timber pipes.
Once the use of Building 6A had come to an end, the structure was systematically robbed of its usable stone, tile and brick, presumably to provide the raw materials needed for new building work. As with Building 4, a general lack of occupation layers and other well stratified deposits associated with Building 6A limits any attempt to closely determine its period of use. The large collection of dumped pottery recovered from the robbed basemented rooms and wall trenches (over 3.000 sherds) appears to provide the best guide as to the period of use of the building, although all of it is clearly re-deposited. Virtually all this material dates to the first or second century AD and overall, it would seem that the construction, occupation and abandonment of Building 6A falls entirely within the second century. The structure was probably finally demolished around AD 200.
Shortly after the area of Building 6A had been cleared and levelled, an entirely new structure was laid out across the site, Building 6B. This was of broadly similar size to the original Building 6A and occupied virtually the same position, again butting onto the outside of the main villa boundary wall. As with Building 6A. following its abandonment the walls of Building 6B had been extensively robbed. The filling of the associated robber- trenches produced about 250 sherds of Roman pottery. It would seem that the robbing of Building 6B occurred sometime during the second half of the third century. This was also the period when the abandonment and robbing of Building 4 seems to have occurred. From the positioning, outside the south-western comer of the walled villa enclosure, it seems clear that the Building 6 complex was intended to mirror the arrangements at the south-east comer, as represented by Building 4. During their final phases, Buildings 4 and 6 were rather different. In Building 4 the main domestic range remained unchanged but a new outer corridor replaced the earlier one. In contrast, Building 6A, with its extended bath-suite, was eventually demolished, to be replaced with an entirely new building (6B) of very similar size and shape to the original pre-baths structure. It would thus appear that the building had reverted back to being an accommodation block, now probably of inferior status to the enlarged Building 4. (information summarised from report) (1)
<1> K. Parfitt, 2007, The Roman villa at Minster in Thanet. Part 4 the south-west buildings 6A and 6B (Article in serial). SKE51652.
Sources/Archives (1)
- <1>XY SKE51652 Article in serial: K. Parfitt. 2007. The Roman villa at Minster in Thanet. Part 4 the south-west buildings 6A and 6B. Archaeologia Cantiana vol. 127 pp 261-296. [Mapped feature: #126763 Roman building, ]
Finds (2)
Protected Status/Designation
- None recorded
Related Monuments/Buildings (1)
Related Events/Activities (1)
- Event Boundary: Excavations at the Abbey Farm Villa, Minster, Thanet (EKE5970)
Record last edited
Jul 25 2024 12:37PM