The legacies of the Romans are all around us

From Exeter to the Moray Firth, the Roman occupation made its mark on the British Isles.

- Adam Henson

In my corner of the country, you don’t have to look too hard to find evidence of the Romans themselves; in fact, it’s impossible to avoid them. There’s an old saying, ‘Scratch Gloucestershire and find Rome’, and it has been proved true time after time.

Two thousand years ago, give or take, the county town of Gloucester was Glevum, the busy market town at Cirencester was Corinium and, at the end of the Cotswold Way, modern-day Bath was Aquae Sulis. There are the remains of once-impressive villas at Chedworth, Great Witcombe and Spoonley Wood near Winchcombe.

Even more intriguingly, a vast and elaborate mosaic lies hidden under the soil in the churchyard at Woodchester near Stroud. I know that mosaic fragments can be found all over the place but the Orpheus Pavement in the Woodchester villa is exceptional; it’s the second largest ancient Roman mosaic in Europe and one of the most intricate, originally made up of one-and-a-half million coloured pieces.