LATIMER
Buckinghamshire, England.
A villa
24 km W of Verulamium, erected in ca. A.D. 150 over
the remains of a Belgic farm. After a short period of
abandonment in the late 3d c. the villa was reoccupied
until the late 4th c. when its rooms were progressively
abandoned. Thereafter four stratified levels of post-villa
occupation and structures carry the history of the farm
into the second half of the 5th c.
The villa began with a small baths, long rear corridor
and about eight living rooms; it was later extended and
in the 4th c. had a large enclosed courtyard and projecting side wings. The villa is notable for its 2d and 3d c.
mosaics. The latter, though badly damaged, provide
three of the four 3d c. villa mosaics known in Roman
Britain. Among the most notable of the post-villa buildings is a cruck-building 17 m long. This and other features of the post-villa occupation, suggest that the farm
may have fallen into the hands of a Germanic auxiliary
and his family.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
B. Burgess, “The Romano-British Villa
at Latimer,”
Records of Bucks 3 (1866) 181-85; K.
Branigan, “The Development and Distribution of Romano-British Occupation in the Chess Valley,” ibid. 18
(1967) 136-49; id., “The Origins of Cruck Construction—A New Clue,”
Medieval Archaeology 12 (1968)
1-11; id., “The Latimer Roman Villa,”
Current Archaeology 20 (1970) 241-44; id.,
Latimer (
Belgic, Roman,
Dark Age and Early Modern Farm) (1971)
MPI.
K. BRANIGAN
