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The day I stumbled on a Roman villa in my back garden
When Luke Irwin discovered evidence of a palatial second century Roman villa in his quiet corner of Wiltshire, he wasn’t prepared for the world’s reaction. The chance nature of the find in his back garden, which was exposed last February when a stretch of vividly coloured mosaic was uncovered during wiring work, certainly made for an attention-grabbing story.
But what was less predictable was the speed at which it spread around the world after he went public with the news in April this year. Within a couple of days, the internet was agog with debate (“What are ancient Roman luxury villas going for nowadays?”) and Irwin’s video about the discovery and excavation of the site – previously a sheep field – had been watched by thousands of people. Things became truly surreal when Fox News introduced the villa to America as “the opulent home of a Roman-era 'Kardashian’ family”.
Reflecting on the madness when I meet him at his home, Irwin, a Dublin-born artist and celebrated rug designer, says that none of the fuss accurately reflects what he feels about the villa: that it is a cultural Aladdin’s cave, which he hopes will help us as a nation get back in touch with our ancient, long-forgotten identity.
In one four-foot section of earth alone archaeologists discovered, laid out in neat strata, a Neolithic flint head, Bronze Age pottery, Iron Age pottery, Roman pottery and shards of a green glaze plate, from which a labourer in the 13th century might have eaten his lunch.
Hundreds of oyster shells were also found in what would have been the “midden” (rubbish tip) of the house, hinting at the wealth of the Roman family who lived there. Even the Romans were a recent phenomenon compared to some of the evidence experts later unearthed on his site. “One of the things that completely freaked me out was when the archaeologists said they’d found extensive evidence of Mesolithic habitation”, says Irwin, 46. “Mesolithic is 10,000 BC. That’s pre-farming.”
In Irwin’s view, it is pure Irish good luck that he was able to uncover such rich evidence for the nation. He and his family (his wife, Alice, is the niece of the Duchess of Cornwall) only moved to the house in 2012, although they claim they felt there was always something “magical” about the place.
In fact, if it hadn’t been Irwin’s back garden in which the mosaic turned up, we might never have known much about it at all. Historic England’s funding coffers for excavations are not known for their depth. “We’d probably have managed to do something,” says David Roberts, the HE field archaeologist who managed Irwin’s dig. “But it would have been on a very small scale.”
It was only because Irwin and four friends chipped in that the cost of a short, two-week excavation and geophysical survey could be met.
A later bout of criticism suggested that the archaeologists’ trenches were filled back in again after this dig because Irwin “didn’t want anyone else to see it”. The truth, as Roberts confirms, is that covering them is standard archaeological practice (plus, he didn’t want Irwin’s sheep falling down the holes). The mosaic was so vulnerable that it had to be re-covered within 24 hours for protection; even Irwin’s children didn’t have a chance to see it.
The ideal scenario going forwards, says Roberts, would be to find the funding for one big dig, including some “tricky targeted geophysics” to find out more about the portion of the villa that lies directly under Irwin’s Grade II listed house, without any invasive building work. It would probably take around four months; if this became financially possible, says Irwin, he would “absolutely, without a shadow of a doubt” give permission.
“I want it exposed more than the maddest Roman historian in the country,” he says. “I want to see what this was. I want to find a Roman child’s toy, you know? You bring the whole history to life by the humdrum and the everyday, not by a decree from Emperor Trajan.”
A four-month stint of archaeologists trampling all over the garden might just about be tolerable, but could this quiet corner of Wiltshire ever become the next Stonehenge?
“I did say to [Historic England], nervously, 'Was there any suggestion that you would open this as a public attraction or open to the public?’ but they said rather sniffily: 'The last thing English Heritage needs is another loss-making site’,” says Irwin.
For now, there is little to suggest the rich historic palace below Irwin’s unremarkable field, other than a small bump and the odd ancient shard of pottery that turns up when his children are playing.
And so it will remain; leaving us to await the archaeologists’ still incomplete report – and to content ourselves with the 1,700-year-old vision of a family of wealthy, contented Romans reclining among the Wiltshire hills, slurping down oysters by the bucketload, unaware that the gaze of the future would one day look back at them with such clarity.