The villa is on the site of an earlier late Iron Age settlement. After the Roman invasion of Britain in 43 AD, there was a military presence here and the Roman villa followed later that century, first made of wood, then stone, developing into a great house over the next 250 years.
The site was occupied from about 50 BC with circular buildings followed by a proto-villa of ca.70 AD and then a sequence of rectangular stone-built structures, culminating in a simple cottage type villa. From the 2nd century this became an increasingly large winged-corridor-type villa with courtyard . It also had two bath-houses, possibly one used by the estate workers and one, smaller one for the villa-owners at one end of the main range of villa buildings. a 2nd century well on the site is probably the largest stone-lined well in Roman Britain.
The names of two probable 2nd century AD owners had their names stamped on some of the villa tiles. They were Tiberivs Clavdivs Vervs and Tiberiv Clavdivs Severvs. Their names suggest they were Roman citizens but most likely to have been native Britons. The villa was at its largest and grandest at this time. This is clear from objects found on the villa site which came from all over the Roman Empire.
At the end of the 3rd century, earlier than most other Romano-British villas, it apparently became abruptly unoccupied and much of it was deliberately dismantled, with "squatter"-type 'family-unit' occupation taking over from the beginning of the 4th century.1