Brading Roman Villa
About
Brading grew from a single Roman-British farm building into a three-range courtyard villa on the Isle of Wight, its 3rd- and 4th-century mosaics showing Orpheus, Medusa, and a strange cockerel-headed man. The South Range, the villa's first building, was raised around 100 CE as a working farmhouse; the larger North Range followed a century later, and the ornate West Range with its mosaics did not arrive until the 300s. A 3rd-century fire barely slowed the estate down, with farming there continuing for another hundred years and coins showing occupation lasting until around 395 CE. By 117 CE, Brading's South Range had already stood on the island for about seventeen years, making it one of the earliest Roman farm buildings on the Isle of Wight.
What happened here
A working estate with a comfortable house attached, and the proportions vary with how rich the owner is and how often he visits. The farm side has presses for oil and wine, threshing floors, storage sunk into the ground, stables and quarters for the workforce. The residential side has baths, dining rooms sited for the view, mosaics, and a garden with water in it. A manager runs the place year-round and reports; the owner arrives for the vintage and for the summer. Produce goes to market or to the owner's town house, and the accounts are kept in detail. Some villas are pure retreat with no farm at all, built on a cliff or a lake specifically to be looked at from a boat.
Sources
Nearby
Roman Maps shows the empire frozen at 11 August 117 CE, the day Trajan died — its moment of greatest territorial extent. Explore the full map →