Monument record IPS 015 - Roman Villa, Castle Hill, Whitton, Ipswich, (IAS 8208).

Roman villa, now built over by housing development.

1854: Discovery of Villa when farm built.

1897: Roman "tesselated pavement" found.

1929-1932 Excavations by Moir. Tessellated pavements: three or four patterned examples. Wall plaster (painted), hypocaust, roofing slates. 2nd to 4th Century Coins. Jet plaque of Atys. Two ? Cremations in pots with tile covers. Finds include Samian, 1st Century cordon vase, rings, bracelets, glass beads, keys, knives, spur, spatula, bodkins, occulist stamp in green stone, fragments of marble slab, window glass fragments, spindle whorls. Also Neolithic Flakes and sherds, (S8).

1946: Excavations by Basil Brown - See IPS 204.

July 1948-September 1949: Basil Brown excavated this site although he dug at other locations on Castle Hill from 1946 onwards. He laid out a series of trenches, excavated Roman pits and ditches and found evidence of two separate levels of Roman occupation with a thick clay layer between the two. He revealed a room with a hypocaust and the remains or settings of 54 pilae; much coloured and decorated wall plaster and tesserae from various parts of the site, which Brown suggeted may have come from tesselated mosaic pavements found in earlier excavations. Finds included sherds from the Castor hunt cup, folded thumb pots and colour coated wares, pieces of thin white vessel glass, bone pins, pottery, spindle whorl, glass and bone games counters, iron hammer, small bronze bow brooch, bronze key and silver rat tail spoon. Saxon pottery sherds found, also mention of possible Saxon Hearth in upper layer of Villa Corridor. Similarly, Late Iron Age material (possibly Neolithic?) associated with clay floor, (S1, S2, S13).

1989: Excavation of bathhouse - See IPS 200.

2001: Construction of fence in the garden of 17 Tranmere Grove, exposed Roman mortar, (S12).

2003: For excavation and geophysical survey for the Time Team television programme see IPS 421.

March 2009: Area of Roman material reported. Exposed in digging small hole (0.8m N-S and 0.38m wide E-W) in acorner of the cultivated area in the south-west part of the garden. A a layer of pea gravel lies over a dense layer of flints with tile fragments, and in the northern part an area of mortar fragments with chalk (S11).

See (S1-S15)

IAS 8205, IAS 8207, IAS 8210, IAS 8211, IAS 8212, all previously recorded under IPS 015, now with separate records, as they are not within the area of the main villa building.