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Crofton Roman Villa

The ten surviving rooms of a Roman farmhouse, with its underfloor heating laid open, under a cover building beside Orpington station.

Photo by Ethan Doyle White, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

A Roman farmer built this house around AD 140 and his successors lived in it, altering it as they went, until about 400: the centre of an estate of some five hundred acres of fields, meadow and wood on the edge of what is now Orpington. At its largest it had at least twenty rooms. Workmen laying a driveway for the council found the first pieces in 1926, and the Kent Archaeological Rescue Unit excavated the site fully in 1988 and put a building over it. Ten rooms can be seen: two still have their floors of opus signinum, the Roman concrete, three show where tiled floors were, and the hypocaust, the underfloor heating that ran hot air through channels and under little pillars of tile, is open to view, with the small finds from the dig in cases beside it. The unit runs it with Bromley Council, on a handful of days a week between spring and autumn.

Where
Crofton Road, BR6 8QE
Nearest station
Orpington · 1 min walk

Open on limited days over the summer; check before travelling.

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