FROCESTER COURT
Gloucestershire, England.
A Roman villa 16 km S of Gloucester. A 1st c. farmstead surrounded by a double ditch was extended ca.
A.D. 275 and a new dwelling erected outside the old
perimeter. This was a winged-corridor villa, to which
was added, ca. A.D. 360, a wing with bath block. In its
final stages it measured 44 by 31 m and contained 19
rooms. Occupation continued until the end of the 5th c.,
by which time crude, grass-tempered pottery had replaced the better quality Romano-British wares. The
center block was burnt down after the bath suite had
been abandoned. Finds are in Gloucester City Museum.
The main room in the center block had been divided
by light partitions forming kitchen, dining room, and
a small storeroom. Among the other rooms were an office
with an ironbound chest sunk in one corner, corn-drying
room with T-shaped corn drier, smithy with forge, heated
and unheated living rooms, and a large workroom. The
whole was built of local stone and the massive foundations of the center block strongly suggest that it had
two stories. Mosaics in the corridor were laid by workmen of the Corinian School. The corridor front was approached by a heavily metaled road which expanded
into a turning area. A courtyard on this front was used
for domestic purposes and contained a small formal
garden.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
D. R. Wilson, “Roman Britain,”
JRS
58 (1968) 198
P; H. S. Gracie, “Frocester Court Roman
Villa,”
Trans. Bristol & Glos. Arch. Soc. 89 (1971) 15-86
PI.
H. S. GRACIE
