Signs of Roman architectural influence were appearing in the south before the invasion. The people responsible for these and for the early villas built after 43 may have been an aspirant pro-Roman tribal aristocracy. Fishbourne is the most celebrated for its size, exceptionally early date, and extraordinary decoration. Fishbourne has been traditionally interpreted as the home of the client king, Togidubnus, but it is also possible it was built as the governor’s residence, or served in both capacities at different times. Angmering (West Sussex) is more conventional, though with mosaics and baths it is exceptional for Britain at this date. Such buildings are so out of context for the period that it is just as likely that immigrant traders or officials owned them as tribal aristocrats. In any case, other influential members of the tribes may have resisted the idea of altering their way of life. Orsett (Essex), in the heart of Trinovantian territory, began life as a significant Iron Age roundhouse in a defended enclosure. The building was not supplanted by a Romanized farmstead until the second century, and even then never matched the high status features of its predecessor. Of course, we do not know why this happened, but Orsett illustrates how exceptional places like Angmering are.
The truth is that we know nothing about villa ownership in Britain, either in any one case or in general. We do not know whether owners were descendants of the Iron Age tribal aristocracy, retired soldiers or
193. Lullingstone (Kent).
One of no life-sized Greek marble busts of mid-second-centur>' date later sealed in a cellar, although they continued to be venerated. The men portrayed were probabK-of Eastern. Mediterranean origin and may have been father and son, perhaps successive owners of the house in the second century. The style indicates they were men of status, perhaps serving in Roman Britain’s provincial government.
Administrators (probably themselves of provincial origin, but not‘British’), or immigrants who crossed the Channel in search of new opportunities or to escape the insecurity of the third and fourth centuries. This places us in an unfortunate position, but there is no avoiding it.
Evidence from Gaul and Italy provides some compensation. Here a combination of literary, epigraphic and archaeological evidence paints a picture in which some villas were worked and owned by the families that lived there, while others were operated by people in the owner’s employment (or enslaved to him), or leased to tenants known as coloni. A colofiushad traditionally been a free tenant, but by 332 laws were already being passed that effectively imprisoned them on the estates where they lived and worked, in order to make sure that the poll tax could be administered and levied effectively. The massive villa at Chiragan (Haute Garonne) in Gaul was contained within a 16 ha (39.5 acres) estate defined by a wall. High ground to the north and south, and a narrowing valley to the southwest, helps define the available agricultural land within its vicinity. In this area, another four villas and three villages, as well as various other farmsteads, have been identified. It has been suggested that here the landscape helps identify what was probably an estate where the subsidiary villas and settlements were occupied by tenants, workers and slaves of the main villa owner.'"
If we assume that Britain was broadly similar, then it becomes easy to see that the larger villas like Bignor and Woodchester were the regional equivalents of Chiragan. Woodchester was a very substantial courtyard villa with a long history, though it did not reach its massive size until the late third and early fourth centuries. Within its orbit are a number of lesser sites, including Frocester Court. Since Frocester did not evolve into a villa until fairly late, it is possible that settlements like these were developed by the owners of great villas specifically to lease to coloni Some late third-century villa sites appeared, perhaps for the same reason, at places where occupation had ceased since the Iron Age, such as at Newtown (Hampshire).
One recent study attempted a more sophisticated analysis of use and ownership of villas through an interpretation of ground-plans.” The idea was that since larger villas exhibit repetition of room types, this must be evidence for occupation by multiple groups within, perhaps a single extended family. In this context then the villa was a capital asset, held not by any one individual, but by a family-based community. This is an interesting idea, but it is based on evidence so limited in its nature that it is as potentially misleading as assuming similar semi-detached houses of the present are each inhabited by similar family units. Since villa ground-plans are very largely made up of square and rectangular rooms, from which we usually have little furniture or any other artifacts used in those rooms, it is not always possible to say what the intended function of a room was, or what it was at any given time later in the house’s history.
One instance where repetition is beyond doubt is the pair of almost identical winged-corridor houses at Bradford-on-Avon (Wiltshire), joined by a wall into a single villa comple. x. The western house was in existence at least by 230, and by 300 the eastern house had been built to such a similar ground plan that it is tempting to see the latter as a house built for a son and his family. But there is absolutely no evidence to support this theory beyond the ground plans and the proximity of the two houses. One could just as easily speculate that the original owner had died, and the first house was sold to a man who invited his friend to build an identical house next door.
Within the villa structure itself, the function of some rooms, such as the baths, kitchens and prominent ‘public’ rooms, such as the dining room [triclinium), is obvious enough [ 194). The fittings and decoration ought at least to give us an idea of the kind of person who owned, or lived in, the villa. Prestige installations like the elaborate octagonal bathhouse at Lufton (Somerset), the detached triconch hall with its Orphic floor at Littlecote (Wiltshire), or the massive Orphic floor in the great hall at Woodchester 1199], show us that some of the villas were owned bv
194. Villa in London. Reconstructed interior of a townhouse in Roman London, as it might have appeared in the late second or early third century, .although London was Britain’s principal commercial and administrative centre, the remains of many houses, from simple strip houses to well-appointed townhouses, have been found.
The wealthiest of these houses enjoyed the fruits of a trading network that extended as far as the eastern. Mediterranean. (.Museum of London).
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