Ditchley Ditchley country house estate Oxfordshire England UK royal hunting gardens Garden Fountain mansion
This is an illustration from ‘Picturesque views of Scots of Noblemen and Gentlemen of Great Britain and Ireland’ Ditchley (Ditchley Park or Ditchley House) is a country house and estate about 2 miles ( km) northeast of Charlbury in Oxfordshire. There are remains of a Roman villa on the Ditchley Park estate at Watts Wells, less than 1 mile ( km) southeast of the house. It was a colonnaded house with outbuildings, threshing floors, and a granary with capacity for the produce of about 1,000 acres (400 ha) of arable land. It was surrounded by a rectangular ditch 360 yards (330 m) by 330 yards (300 m). The site is less than 2 miles ( km) north of the course of Akeman Street Roman road, and is one of a number of Roman villas and Romano-British farmsteads that have been identified in the area, apparently associated with the territory bounded by Grim's Ditch. The villa site was identified by aerial archaeology in 1934 and excavated in 1935. It was found to have been first settled in about AD 70 with a set of timber-framed buildings, which were replaced in stone in the 2nd century.[6] In about AD 200 a fire severely damaged the stone buildings and the site was abandoned. The site was reoccupied early in the 4th century, and occupation on a more modest scale than before continued until the end of that century.[6] Some time before the villa was discovered and excavated, a hoard of 1,176 bronze Roman coins was found between Box Wood and Out Wood, about 600 yards (550 m) to 700 yards (640 m) northeast of the villa site. The coins range in date from about AD 270 onwards and seem to have been buried in a ceramic pot about AD 395, towards the end of the Roman occupation. The hoard was transferred to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford in 1935. Grim's Ditch, which passes through the present park and estate, is an ancient boundary believed to have been constructed during the Roman occupation of Britain in about the 1st century AD.
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Photo credit: © SOTK2011 / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
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