Cotterstock 1976-93
The villa at Cotterstock was first known of in the 1730s when mosaics were found in the field then known as the ‘guilden acre’. William Stukeley came the site to see the mosaics being uncovered and a small fragment was taken away to Deene Hall to be set into a summer house.
Thereafter the position of the site faded from memory until the summer of 1976 when the outlines of the buildings that made up the villa were revealed from the air as parch marks in the grass field.
Some limited cleaning of a ditch running across the site was undertaken in the 1980s, and a geophysical survey was undertaken in the 1990s. All this research was then plotted to create a plan of a villa that remains one of the largest in Britain, comparable with some of the other large sites such as Bignor (Sussex) and North Leigh (Oxford).
Two mosaics are known from the site and both were illustrated by Edmund Artis in his book of 1828. There were other mosaics which were described in the 1730s newspaper accounts of the early excavations as being of ‘inferior quality’ and thus not recorded. The plan of the villa shows that the whole structure was set around four courtyards.
S.G. Upex, ‘The Roman villa at Cotterstock, Northamptonshire’ Britannia 32, 2001, p. 57-91.
S.G. Upex, ‘Cotterstock: A lost villa re-discovered’ Current Archaeology 191, 2004, p. 512-16.
Air Photography
The site of the villa was relocated by aerial photography during the extensive dry period between May and August 1976 when outlines of buried walls could be seen as parch marks on the grass. The site was seen to be that of an extensive villa arranged around a series of courtyards.
Aerial photograph of the site taken in July 1976 looking south
Fieldwalking & Earthwork Survey
During the autumn of 1988 the area of the villa and the two adjoining fields were investigated on the ground. The principal ranges of buildings shown on the air photographs were visible as partial earthworks. The villa building platform survives as a relatively flat area approximately 200m long by 70m wide which looks to have originally been terraced into the slope of the hillside.
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In 1989 a 63m section of an 1815 Enclosure ditch was inspected prior to mechanical cleaning. A total of eight walls were revealed in the section as well as six well-defined surfaces.
Volunteers from MidNAG expose the bank of the enclosure ditch
Plan of the exposed features and their relationship to those shown on air photographs and the geophysical survey
Geophysical Survey
A resistivity survey was undertaken by Adrian Challands over a total of ten days in 1992 and 1993.
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This provided confirmation of the aerial photography and suggested the subsoil structures within the northeast areas were well defined with good preservation.
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There were less clear results from the southwest portions suggesting post-abandonment building rubble and subsequent disturbance. The image below is after filtering to provide a clearer image of the surviving foundations.
Cotterstock villa: geophysical survey
Interpretation
By combining the detail from each of the investigations it was possible to surmise a detailed layout and, with knowledge drawn from other villa examples, make inferences about the evolution of the site. There was potentially expansion from a “cottage-house” phase in the early Roman period through to a winged-corridor complex with four courtyards. Accurate dating is not feasible without excavation.
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The villa at Cotterstock remains the largest known villa in the lower Nene valley area. Its primary purpose is likely to have been agricultural though its proximity to the industrial centre at Ashton suggests possible links to the smelting and ironworking associated with nearby iron rich deposits.
Cotterstock villa: interpretive plan
Tentative reconstruction of the site from the south-east as it may have appeared sometime to the end of the 4th century. Image Credit – Stephen Upex