Bourne Park Roman villa was identified from aerial photographs in 2011. The outlines of a range of rooms indicating a Roman villa are visible in an aerial photo of 1990. Further rooms appear on a Google Earth image of 2003. The 2003 image suggests that the villa possibly lay within a rectangular ditched enclosure lying on the same NW-SE alignment with a double ditched trackway approaching from the south east.

A metal detecting survey carried out in the early 1990s recorded the presence of the cropmarks and found a scatter of Roman coins and metal finds that covered the area to the east of the visible marks on the Bourne Park cricket pitch. (1)

A geophysical survey in 2011 detected walling of two ranges at right angles to each other, the second range extending to the east from the first visible in the cropmarks. A large magnetic anomaly in association with the western range may relate to a hearth, oven or furnace. The western range measures c.45m x 30m and the eastern range measures c.33m x 20m. It is not clear from this survey whether additional structures exist or if the two are connected where their angles of orientation meet. The existence of the 'apse' seen on the aerial photography could not be confirmed by the geophysical survey however. (2)

A second season of geophysical survey in 2012 found further features anomalies probably associated with the villa, including further elements of the enclosure around the villa site (delimited by ditches and a possible wall) and possible structures on the northern side of the enclosure. (3)

<1> 1990-2?, Records of metal detecting finds from Bourne Park (Unpublished document). SKE16775.

<2> Paul Johnson and Lacey Wallace, 2012, Bourne Park (Bishopsbourne) Geophysical Survey (Unpublished document). SKE17380.

<3> Lacey Wallace, Paul Johnson and Kristian Strutt, 2013, Bourne Park (Bishopsbourne) Geophysical Survey: 2012 Results (Unpublished document). SKE18147.