Lullingstone Roman Villa
About
The first house at Lullingstone rose around 80-90 CE on the bank of the River Darent, a winged-corridor design linking two flanking wings that became one of the most common villa layouts in Roman Britain. That original building stood alone for roughly sixty years before a heated bath block was added around 150 CE, well after this map's snapshot. The site's famous 4th-century mosaics and early Christian house-church are centuries removed from this modest first-century structure — in 117 CE the villa was still in this earlier, simpler form.
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
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 →