Roman villa

Chedworth Roman Villa. There were at least 17 other Roman villas within ten miles of Chedworth, but tnis is the best preserved. The Victorian building is a hunting lodge erected by the lord who discovered the site in the 1800s.

The National Trust have done a lot of work including building climate controlled structures over a large section so that visitors can see the amazing mosaic tiled floors and to prevent the weather from damaging them. There are even more mosaics hidden under the turf outside.

The villa probably looked something like this and was probably a large farm and luxury house. The owners were very wealthy and important. They lived in the top section and bottom left wing was for their servants.

They had two bathing sections, one for women and one for men, both with warm, hot and cold baths. You can see part of the under floor heating system here.

Have a guess what these three items are. They are based on things found during excavations here.

A bowl of large snail shells. The Romans brought these large snails, about two inches in diameter, with them to England, and their descendants  still live in the area.

The gold metal thing is a strigl, used by your slave to scrape olive oil and skin flakes off your body before you went into the bath water. Women then used the oil/skin flakes as a hair gel!

The stick with a wad of wool on the end is the toilet paper. They used it to wipe themselves, washed it in water, then dipped it in vinegar to disinfect it for the next person to use.

Here is something nicer - a selection of mosaic patterns. The tiles are not painted. They are made from different stone for the different colours. Some of the tiles are only about 1cm square. Amazingly intricate.