I was stood in the north range at Chedworth which was a Roman villa from the third, fourth century
where there is evidence of an earlier villa from the second century. And it was discovered in the 1860s,
and there's a story that the gamekeeper for the estate was out and he was rabbiting, and his dog
was trying to dig out one of the rabbits and brought out all this material.
They got very excited because they recognised it as Roman material. So they came out on site and started excavation.
The latest from work that we've done; so we've done quite a lot of intensive
work on the site since 2010, seems to point to it being the home of someone very influential
in the region. So it might even have been the regional governor's home or country home and some
of the objects that we've looked at again and new ones that we found are indicating he had a very
wide influence and obviously knew the right people, and also wanted his place to be the best, the most
up-to-date. The one that's most in touch with what was happening at the centre of the empire.
The latest fashions, everything. Peter Salway's said it's probably like a party house really.
So every year we had a programme of excavations and the new building was opened in 2012.
And then we did the main corridor whilst people could see us working whilst visiting the new building.
But there was thoughts then to maybe extend and do one across the north range.
So we started a programme of excavations targeted at specific areas to see whether mosaics
existed, what the walls were like, whether they could take a building off them because
one of the special things about the new covered building is it's built off the actual walls.
So when you go in you get the feeling of how big the place was because the walls are actually off
the Roman walls. So now you get that whole experience of being inside a Roman building.
We would get together volunteers, local people, staff, anyone who knew we were excavating, and got
in quick, could get a day to come and dig there and excavate at Chedworth and dig up the mosaics
and walk around in bare feet on the mosaics and find amazing things because there still was a lot
to find even though the Victorians had excavated a lot of it. And they'd left us tiny little bits
that they hadn't excavated so we had pristine untouched areas to excavate. We found a few really
interesting objects that aren't that usual to find in Roman Britain that help us look at the
person here. What status he had, what influences he had, who it might be. But then two years ago
we found in the north range this piece of glass. In the trench behind me which was dug in two days
and finished in two days we came across nothing but bare ground within a couple of inches below ground.
This one ended up going to about six foot below current ground level and even then we
weren't finished with the actual hole. Digging it was a challenge. The soil around here isn't kind
so it required a lot of hard graft and a lot of effort in order to actually get to the meaningful
archaeology, but in the end it was all worth it. There was a lot of the usual pottery. Some
sort of very rudimentary pieces of glass as well, quite generic. But aside from that it was
quite bland actually. It was mid-dig and it was about three foot down and I'd only been finding
this pottery so I was getting a little little fed up admittedly, and at the time the soil
was very clay so I was sort of working quite hard to work my way through it.
And suddenly my trowel just glanced this bit of glass that didn't sound quite right.
And I just brushed the surface with my finger and suddenly saw this pattern emerge and
at that point I knew it was something very special indeed.
It's quite a small piece but it has an amazing bluey-green colour,
and on it are applied little loops of yellow and white glass on the top. Really unusual.
No idea. It's no parallels with not really, no one could think of anything similar.
I was going to a conference of Roman finds research group, and the main lady to look at
this glass and give us some more information, Jennifer Price was going. So I took the glass
along to show her and she got very excited as soon as she saw it. So off she went and
not quite two years later she she found a comparable piece in the Corning Museum in New York.
And it's a fish. So it's shaped like a fish on its side and our bit fits just where at the end
where the tail flares out from the body to the tail. So it just comes from that little bit.
Fits perfectly, and it's the same kind of glass as well with this applied decoration.
So she's concluded with looking at the Corning glass which doesn't have a provenance so that's
frustrating. But with her knowledge and all the research she'd done, and all the other
people in the Roman glass world, across the whole world, had all seen it and all pondered on it.
They decided that somewhere around the Black Sea is where it was probably made.
Well the glass is in the museum on site at the moment so you can see it. We've had an illustrator
actually do a painting of what it might have looked like and hopefully we're going to get
some specialist glassmakers who do historic glass to actually make one. So try and make one
and so we'll actually see the technique, see how it works, and see the finished thing,
so that we can then compare. It's a special little piece that caused great excitement,
and excitement on site when it was found.