Excavations to the South of Chignall Roman Villa, Essex, 1977-81

With major contributions from Denise Allen; Elizabeth Healey, Rosemary Luff, Hilary Major, Peter Murphy, Catriona Turner-Walker, Ann Stirland and Colin Wallace, and contributions from Ernest Black, Nigel Brown, David Buckley, Brenda Dickinson, Stephen Greep, Kay F. Hartley, Daphne Nash, Richard Reece and Patricia Ryan. Illustrations by John Callaghan, Lesley Collett, Cecil Hewitt, Sue Holden, Lesley Monk, Hazel Martingell, Roger Massey-Ryan, Alison McGhie, Nick Nethercoat and Ruth Parkin. Excavations from 1977–81 within a ten hectare area south of the scheduled villa at Chignall St. James, showed continuous development from a Middle Iron Age settlement into a prosperous Roman estate. Unusually high proportions of cattle bone indicate the centrality of stock-keeping in the site’s economy throughout the Roman period. It is inferred that a late Roman cemetery is the burial ground for a group of coloni. The villa, known to have had a bath-house in the late 1st century, appears to have been unenclosed until the 3rd century. This hexagonal enclosure later influenced the alignment of an early medieval narrow-rig field system.