Investigation Locations
Victorian
Post-Medieval
Medieval
The Domesday Survey
Anglo-Saxon
Roman
- The Challenge
- Our Investigation
- Conclusion
- Further Reading
Prehistory

THE CHALLENGE

What did Roman Wantage look like? If there was a settlement at Wantage, was it a town or a rural village? Or were the people here living in villas at the centre of agricultural estates?

Since the nineteenth century, finds of Roman pottery and coins have been recorded from the Barwell, Belmont, and Limborough areas of Wantage. These suggest a sizeable settlement existed on the west bank of the Letcombe Brook during the Roman period. But what did this settlement look like? We will need to look for answers to this question before we can examine the wider picture of territories and boundaries.

There are no written documents from this period to help us and so we will rely on archaeological evidence, taking a fresh look at what has already been discovered and recorded.