Rutland Roman villa
The Rutland Roman villa is a Romano-British villa site in Rutland, England. The site was listed as a scheduled monument by Historic England on 23 November 2021. The villa includes the first example of a mosaic in Britain which depicts scenes from Homer's Iliad. A geophysical survey of the site in 2021 showed evidence of a large villa complex including indications of a formal garden, a bath house, perhaps a chapel and two mausolea. Further excavations in 2022 uncovered the bath house as well as a second mosaic, possibly from a dining area of the villa. This type of large luxurious villa complex is unusual in this part of Roman Britain (see List of Roman villas in England) Discovery The site was first identified from cropmarks visible on Google Earth in June 2018. In 2020 (during the COVID-19 pandemic in England), Jim Irvine, the son of the landowner, identified some "unusual pottery" whilst walking through the site and dug a small trench. Historic England subsequently funded an urgent excavation of the site by University of Leicester Archaeological Service in August 2020. Villa The villa complex is likely to be a villa rustica comprising luxurious residential buildings and agricultural buildings. A