This year's excavations of Bedford Roman villa will take place from Saturday, September 26th to Sunday, October 11th.
Richard Fuller MP Said:
I have been delighted to show my continuing support for this community project, which has some relevance to my own constituency of North Bedfordshire, since the villa was the Imperial estate centre controlling the entire length of the Ouse Valley that runs through the constituency, the land being given over to growing grain for the Roman armies of Britain and the Rhine.
To help fund this year’s excavations, and to help realise the long term ambition to publish results in a well-illustrated and easy to understand volume detailing what has been uncovered in Bedford, The Bedford Roman Villa group have launched a GoFundMe campaign. There is also a video featuring a very much younger version of me, which provides more details on the project and background to the site.
It would be great if you could support this worthy cause that does so much to unearth (literally) so much of the hidden and rich history of our area.
Last year the group unexpectedly uncovered what may be part of the northern range of the villa.
While there is evidence for some internal rooms, a significant part of the building is made up of a large aisled hall whose roof was supported by columns. This was attached to a south-facing veranda, fronted by a gravelled courtyard, much of which is still in place.
As a consequence, one of this year’s objectives is to dig further trenches over this northern range to better understand its internal arrangement.
A further objective is to uncover a large section to the south east of the Manton Lane field to see what surprises this may have in store, including following possible traces of a metalled roadway found in previous excavations that that led to the Roman villa from the local road network.
The Go Fund Me page can be foudn at: https://gofund.me/fc897d171
A YouTube video with more information can be found at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10aIlw6buaw
