WINTERTON
Lincolnshire, England.
Mosaic
pavements at Winterton were found and recorded in the
18th c., and were subsequently damaged by ploughing.
Extensive excavations, begun in 1958, are still in progress. The site seems to have been settled from the time
of the Roman conquest, but the earliest building yet
found dates from ca. A.D. 100. The first period is represented by three circular houses. One is 17.1 m in diameter, with substantial stone walls and foundations and a concrete floor bordered by a quarter-round molding; it
is probably a domestic building, not a temple.
The circular buildings were demolished ca. A.D. 180
and replaced by an assemblage of rectilinear structures
arranged along the sides of a square. The principal house
on the W side had mosaic pavements from the beginning—unusual in a Romano-British villa of the 2d c. In the
NW corner was a bath building, and on the N side a
large aisled house, subdivided into domestic accommodation at the W end and a storage and working area at the E. Later a similar aisled house was built on the S side of the site.
A major reconstruction took place early in the 4th c.
The main house was completely rebuilt, but little of the
new building has survived. The aisled house on the N
side was enriched with mosaic pavements, and a bath
suite was built into the E end of the S aisle. Occupation
continued to the end of the 4th c., after which the site
was used as a cemetery, with graves dug into the ruins
of the N aisled house.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
AntJ 46 (1966) 72-84.
I. M. STEAD
