More information : TL 277405. A Roman villa lies at the southern end of Guilden Morden parish. A series of overlapping rectangular enclosures defined by ditches of varying width suggest several phases of the site. A rectangular building overlies the broadest of the ditches and a smaller building at a gap in the same ditch may be a gate-house. The original photographs recorded indications of structures within the principal enclosure. This important site extends into land that was newly ploughed when the AP was taken, and it may be that the main buildings of the villa have not yet been identified. (1)
TL 277405. Roman villa, 1000 yards NE of Ashwell. Schedule number Cambridge 90. (2)
TL 27634054: Site occupies a slight level platform in a ploughed field below the brow of the hill. No significant finds have been made apart from a few fragments of tile which were possibly Roman (a). (3)
CA 94 Listed as the site of a winged corridor villa. (4)
Tl 277405 Roman villa 1000yds (910m) NE of Ashwell village. (5)
The Roman villa complex is visible as cropmarks on air photographs centred at TL 2762 4054. The nucleus of the villa comprises a large rectangular enclosure defined by a broad ditch up to 7.3m wide and roughly orientated north-west to south-east. This encloses an area measuring 107m by 79.5m and has at least one double-ditched division towards the western end. Some sparse negative cropmarks in the centre of this enclosure suggest the location of the main villa building.
Most unusually, a large rectangular building or walled structure is also indicated as overlying the southern arm of the enclosure ditch. This feature, which has at least one internal division, measures 31m by 15m. A third small structure spans the entrance to the enclosure, in the centre of the east ditch, probably indicating the gatehouse as mentioned above.
Numerous ditches extend from this nucleus, forming a network of rectilinear enclosures to the north, south and east. The latter is the most complex, with multiple phases indicated. A very tentative fourth building is visible here, defined by two rows of small pits, 10m by 3.8m. Numerous sinous ditches and pits in this area have been dismissed as geological.
Access to the villa complex appears to have been via a broad trackway extending to the south-east for at least 620m. It is not unreasonable to suggest that this trackway would orginally have linked up with the network of Iron Age/Roman settlement activity to the east (UID 1394977).
Features to the north on the same alignment may be associated (UID 1602111).
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