Object in Focus - Roman Pottery

These pieces of pottery was found in Gadebridge Park on the site of the Roman villa.

The villa was situated in what is now Gadebridge Park, about one mile north of Hemel Hempstead, adjacent to the Leighton Buzzard Road and just beyond its junction with Galley Hill.

Excavations first revealed a bath house lying near the pool, and later the considerable walls of the villa itself were exposed. The site is thought to have been occupied for well over three hundred years.

Originally it was probably a farmstead, but after the Roman invasion of AD 43, its importance as a farm near to the Roman city of Verulamium would have caused it to be extended. From the Antonine Period, AD c. 138, stone buildings were added, and around AD 300 a large swimming pool was built, the biggest in Roman Britain after Bath.