Excavating roman timbers at Whitehall Villa in Northamptonshire.

Excavating roman roof trusses at Whitehall Roman Villa. These trusses are a very rare survival! The video shows them being excavated, cleaned and stored in water-filled tubes.

The trusses come from a building which pre-dated the villa, and were re-used to define the edge of foundations of the bath-house while it was being built in the late 3rd Century AD. The trusses were used to anchor large flat stones holding back the bank above the foundations.

For more about Whitehall Roman Villa, see http://www.whitehallvilla.co.uk

Music by Simon Cooper.
Video shot and edited by Jeremy Cooper: http://www.oliomedia.co.uk

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• archaeology
• roman villa
• excavation
• conservation
• Whitehall Roman Villa
• CLASP
• dig

[oliomedia]

We now know that these are certainly not roof trusses! What they are remains a mystery, although it is confirmed that they have had at least three different uses including the one we found them. It is possible that one of them was part of a mechanism of some sort - perhaps a mill. In spite of their size and survival, the timbers are not of national-level interest, but the way they were cut might demonstrate an interesting local/regional variation on usual Roman practice.

Jeremy Cooper