Roman Settlement remains

 archaeological site, Roman Empire, invisible, abandoned settlement, scheduled ancient monument

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The Romano-British site to the north-east of New House Farm, and north of Parlour Coppice, was identified by at least the mid-C20 through the recovery over many years of substantial quantities of Roman artefacts within the plough soil horizon. The finds included an extensive assemblage of early Roman pottery. In 1969 field walking led to suggestions that the buried archaeological remains within the field to the north-east of New House Farm were those of an extensive farmstead settlement. Further archaeological investigations in 1996-7, however, as part of the Wroxeter Hinterland Project (a survey of the settlement pattern for the Wroxeter region) and in 2009 which included a geophysical survey and partial excavation confirmed that the site is an unenclosed Romano-British roadside settlement. Pottery and coins from the site have shown that it was occupied from the first century AD, with evidence for activity continuing into the second century and, at some level, into the third or perhaps fourth century.

Although some 18km to the south-east, the settlement is located within the hinterland of Wroxeter (Viroconium Cornoviorum) which was originally a military base established in the mid-first century AD that grew from the second century into the fourth largest town in Roman Britain and the civitas capital of the Cornovii, an Iron Age tribe. Early military establishments had a significant impact on the local area, influencing native custom and settlement patterns. Their role in the Romanisation of Britain is therefore of particular importance, with those settlements in their hinterland being some of the first to demonstrate the impact of these new influences. The settlement to the north-east of New House Farm lies within this zone of influence and finds from the site, which confirm its occupation from at least the end of the first century AD, demonstrate that it was closely linked with the nearby military establishment, sharing access to the same regional and overseas pottery suppliers, for instance.
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