Our Neighbors the Romans

One of my very favorite things about living in England is the old stuff. I liked that about New England when we moved there from California, too, because in comparison there are older and better preserved houses in New England (with the exception of some cool adobe ruins in a park I used to play in when I was growing up...) But England really beats both California and Massachusetts hands down in the cool-historical-places-and-buildings game! 

Pretty much anywhere you drive, you see old things (and old people, too, come to think of it, but that's a post for a different day...) Our little village has lots of history, people having lived here in settlements for two thousand years. And since people have lived here for so long, there are layers of history almost everywhere. Rumor has it, for example, that somewhere around Naunton are the ruins of the last standing round house, that was modeled on the old tribal construction techniques that existed before the Romans introduced square architecture with stones.

And speaking of Romans, we live right down the road (maybe eight miles?) from the incredible ruins of a Roman villa. We finally visited last weekend when we got a National Trust membership. I cannot wait to go back and back and back. We're especially eager to go back on a weekday when it's mostly empty so we can explore more and have a picnic.

The walls are sprawling and mostly only knee high at this point, so it's hard to get a picture that gives a sense of the footprint of the building. There are bits and pieces of old columns stacked up in places, and there are some pretty complete baths and saunas that make it easy to imagine life in Roman Britain (for a rich person, at least). I will tell you this--if you realize nothing else at this villa you realize rich Romans like their baths! There were hot baths, cold baths, warm baths, tepid baths, saunas. I'm actually not exaggerating (well, maybe about the tepid part...) There are also really cool excavated under-floor heating systems that probably beat out heating systems in Britain for the next 1500 years or so...

All of the walls and baths and rooms and heating systems were really fun to explore, as were the sweeping views of the valley below that made it easy to see why Mr. Roman chose to build his villa there. But all of these things are really overshadowed by the amazing mosaics that various waves of archaeologists have painstakingly uncovered. They are the biggest and most intact mosaics of anywhere in Britain, and really they rival some that Eric and I have seen in Italy. 

In keeping with the mosaic theme, they had make-you-own mosaics set up in the craft room overlooking the villa, and Rebecca thoroughly enjoyed designing and gluing her own. She wants to make more, so that is one more reason to go back again soon!