Lullingstone Roman Villa and the Darent Valley
An aerial view of the fields around the site of Darenth Villa.

Darenth Villa

This villa is one of the biggest in the Darent Valley. It gives us lots of clues about what life in the countryside was like in Roman Britain.

Back to the Map

A black and white photograph of the remains of Darent Villa during the excavation in 1895. The image shows many rooms with stone walls.
Darenth Villa was first excavated in 1895.
© InstArch

What did the Villa look like?

Darenth Villa is one of the largest villa complexes in England. It had over 70 rooms! There was also a bath house and what has been interpreted as a swimming pool, ornamental pool, walled gardens, and lots of other outbuildings and workshops.

Evidence from the Villa

Darenth Villa doesn’t have the elaborate mosaics and other expensive decorations found at other Roman villas. Despite this, archaeologists have found lots of evidence that suggests it was a very wealthy settlement. This includes painted wall plaster, ornate floors, bronze sculptures and many Roman coins. There’s also evidence of window glass and a large aisled building which may have been one of the largest in rural Britain. The villa has a large entrance and courtyard which probably had a shrine and a well.

Click on the images below to find out more about some of the features found at Darenth Villa.

A black and white photograph of a man in early 20th century clothes standing in a trench in front of an arched doorway. There are piles of tiles around his feet that were part of a Roman hypocaust system.

Hypocaust System

Hypocaust System

Hypocausts were a kind of central heating system. They were made using pillars of tiles called pilae to support the floor. The Romans lit fires to create hot air which passed though the gap created by the pillars under the floor. This heated their homes.

 

Excavations at Darenth Villa showing the hypocaust in 1895 © Kent Archaeological Society



A black and white photograph of a curved water channel or drain covered by ceramic tiles.

Drain

Drain

This drain is covered by ceramic tiles. Water was important to the Romans because they used it in so many of their daily activities. It was used in cooking and washing as well as in lots of different industries like farming, wool-working and milling.

 

© Kent Archaeological Society



The remains of a tiled floor with small dark brown cubed tiles and larger pieces of rubble.

Tiles

Tiles

Ornate tiled floors suggest that the people who lived at Darenth Villa were very wealthy. Only very wealthy people would have been able to afford to decorate their homes with expensive decorations like intricate tiles, painted plaster and sculptures. 

 

Tessellated floors like the one at Darenth Villa and this one at Otford Church Field Villa were very expensive to create. © Discovering Roman Otford Project (DROP)



Interior view of an Anglo Saxon Sunken Hut, showing a triangular thatched roof and vertical wooden plank walls. Light shines through the gaps in these planks but the room is very dark with a dirt floor.

Saxon Sunken Huts

Saxon Sunken Huts

Like at Franks Hall Villa, there is evidence of Saxon sunken-floor huts at Darenth Villa. This means that people were still living at the Darenth Villa site into the 5th and 6th centuries after the Romans left Britain. Earlier finds like Mesolithic flint and Neolithic pottery shows that the site was also used during prehistory, long before the Romans arrived in Britain in AD 43.

 

An example of an Anglo-Saxon hut at West Stow Anglo-Saxon Village © Midnightblueowl, CC BY-SA 3.0



A man wearing a sandy-coloured tunic kneels down next to a millstone. He holds a wooden handle slotted into the stone, turning the wheel to grind flour. A bag of grain sits behind him.
Millstones like the one shown here have been found in the Darent Valley.

Crafts and Skills at the Villa

Archaeologists have found lots of clues about how the outbuildings at Darenth Villa were used. The tanks they found could have been part of a 'fulling' factory for working wool.

There are also two large corn-dryers that were used to dry out crops. Dried crops like corn lasted a lot longer and could be stored over the winter.

In 1972 archaeologists found evidence of a wood-lined water channel which probably ran from the river Darent. They also found millstones at the villa. These two things together suggest that there might have been a working mill at the settlement too.