More information : (SE 26508185) Roman Bath (R) (Site of)
Tessellated Pavement (R) found AD 1859. (1)
Excavations on behalf of the Roman Antiquities Committee of the Yorks. Arch. Society were carried out in 1938, 1940 and 1946 by Mr R Gilyard-Beer on a site originally discovered in 1876. The principal structures were a small dwelling-house with corridor backed by a single range of rooms, three having tressellated pavements; a bath-building with five rooms, two praefurnia and three annexes excavated in 1938-40 and a small building almost entirely destroyed in post Roman times. Fragments of two rooms, one having a hypocaust and both showing signs of reconstruction, were recognised. A plunge bath of massive construction, 40 ft x 15 ft x 7 ft deep and with a flight of steps in one corner. A circular hole set in a flag on the floor, at the end nearest the steps and opposite the waste pipe at the NE end, may have been a device for filling the bath. An aqueduct which passed beneath the floors of the dwelling house, seems to have ended at the bath. The dwelling-house and plunge-bath were built in the second half of the 2nd century, the latter abandoned and filled in early in the 4th century. The house and separate range of hot baths were in use for another 70 years or more. The site shows no signs of occupation between the last quarter of the 4th century and the Middle Ages. (2-3)
The exposed NW angle of the bath-block, 2.5m in maximum height, (see photograph) together with a fragment of tessellated pavement now fall in a private garden. Surveyed at 1:2500. No other remains are visible, but the present owner says that the plunge is largely intact buried beneath a shrubbery at approximately SE 26498182. (4)
NK 36 Listed as a villa. (5)
Additional reference. (6)
The lack of obviously agricultural buildings and the possible lustral implications of the baths have led some people to interpret this site as a shrine. (7) |