Just below the surface

My workshop area is surrounded by vast, open fields which have a busy little stream running through them. It springs from a high plateau known as Kingsdown. Kingsdown has a golf course, and hidden in the boundary walls of it are prehistoric standing stones. The medieval wall-builders simply incorporated them into the new wall, as the boundaries had already been set a few thousand years before they were born.

Over the years, the the ploughs that turn over the soil of our fields hit lumps of stone, and the farmers pick them up and throw them in the hedgerows. In amongst the stones there are pieces which have obviously been worked into shapes - lengths of C-section channels which formed the drainage systems of Roman villas which we know used to be on the site about 1500/1800 years ago. 

The local village had a massive Roman villa which took up a very large area under the church and over the playing fields. Mosaics have been uncovered here and elsewhere in the immediate area. The Romans and Romano-British had a big presence here, about four miles from Bath.

Yesterday I was shown this object by a friend who had found it thrown into a hedgerow along with all the other bits and pieces struck by a plough. It is a classical pillar base from what must have been quite an important villa, right next to our workshops. Interestingly, it shows signs of have been in a fierce fire - the stone turns a pinky red when heated to the extreme.

Amateur archeology is such a wonderful escape from the present boring reality. I love the conjecture. I wonder if the villa was laid to waste by fire just before the Dark Ages, or if it was just destroyed by a careless accident when the hypocaust was left unattended overnight?