Great Casterton is interesting as it has both a walled town and a villa, both of which have an interesting history. To keep things simple, they are treated separately here.

THE VILLA

The villa is situated about a quarter of a mile from the town, and is of late foundation, with the earliest buildings erected in around AD300. They comprised an aisled hall measuring 102' x 47', a threshing floor, a circular corn drying kiln and a cart shed. The complex remained in use for at least fifty years. Between AD350 and AD365, the entire group were demolished and replaced. Twenty years after this, the rooms were again altered, this time being made more luxurious, a process including the insertion of hypocausts and mosaics. Unfortunately the house was destroyed by a violent fire sometime after AD375. The uncertainty about the dating of the event is due to the severity of the fire, in which coins melted together, and the tesserae of the mosaics burned. Although the fire meant the end of the villa as it had been, it doesn't seem to have stopped habitation completely, as some time afterwards, a small corn drying floor was built into the ruins.

THE TOWN

The earliest settlement at Great Casterton was in the first century, when a fort was built, presumably to guard the crossing of the river Gwash. A 'vicus' grew up outside the fort, and this civilian settlement continued to grow when defence of the crossing was no longer necessary. At the end of the second, or the beginning of the third century the town was walled, an honour which has many implications. These are discussed in some detail in the Preparations for Defence section of the Decline pages, so they are only mentioned briefly here. The walled enclosure covered somewhere between 13 and 18 acres, and is surrounded on three sides by the river. The original walls were accompanied by two steep ditches, but in the mid fourth century the defences were altered. A new ditch was cut, 60' wide, further away from the walls. This allowed bastions to be built. A diagram showing both of these phases is below.

Coins discovered at the bases of the bastions date them to between AD337 and AD350. The defensive capabilities of these bastions were impressive, especially if each mounted two ballistae, the implications of which are discussed in 'Decline'. The interior of the enclosure has also yielded archaeological information. The remains of buildings have been found, mostly of a simple nature, but fragmentary evidence of large moulded stone implies at least one building of stature. The line of Ermine Street runs through the centre of the town, and the discovery of a bath house dating to the late first century has led to the suggestion that a 'mansio' was present in the town. A 'mansio' is the Roman equivalent of a coaching inn, in that it provided an overnight stop for travelling officials, and also a place at which horses could be changed. Finds outside of the walls have also provided information on the life of the inhabitants. A cemetery is located around fifty yards north of the northern gate, a typical Roman practice, and a number of pottery kilns have been located, which operated during the early third century.