Excavations reveal details about a mysterious 1,800-year-old Roman villa in Wales

Archaeologists are revealing the secrets of the remote Abermagwr Roman villa in Ceredigion, west Wales that was first discovered in 2006.

Excavations since then have shed light on the Romanisation of the rural west Wales landscape eighteen hundred years ago.

The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales notes in a statement: "The Roman Villa was a comparatively rustic building with clay floors and open fireplaces." But it surprised archaeologists by producing fragments of one of the finest Roman glass vessels from Wales.

New work on the roof slate also revealed a staggering logistics of this task. Some six thousand six hundred stone slates were used to roof the Villa and weighed up to twenty three tons.

The release goes on to say excavations show that the bill was established around AD230, at least a century after the nearby Roman fort was abandoned. It was occupied until around AD330 when it was abandoned following a catastrophic fire.

The release also notes Roman villas are not common in Wales - just over thirty known, or possible, villas are known and these are mostly in the south east of the country.

Previously the area around the Abermagwr villa was seen as a 'militarised' zone with little interaction between the Roman occupying forces and the local population.