Detailed review by Chouchin
Chouchin
Kent, United Kingdom99%
"Secluded, detached villa in 200 acres with river frontage. The property has been extended and now affords spacious family accommodation as well as domestic staff quarters. Warm air under-floor central heating throughout. Through dining room with decorative tiled floor. Suite of bathrooms with hot and cold plumbing and sunken baths. Excellent decorative order with many unique design features. Farm buildings. Viewing highly recommended."
So might a fourth century Romano-British estate agent, with one eye on his commission, have written up this villa. Nearly two thousand years later the current owners, English Heritage, have had the decorators in to redo the layout and displays, and they are just as keen that we should view it. So off I went.
I'm sure "locus, locus, locus" was the mantra then just as much as now, as this is a most charming and peaceful location. It's fortunate in that it remains secluded - no modern housing or industry crowds up around it or indeed is visible from it at all. In fact, if you pick your spot, blotting out the car park and the unfortunately placed railway viaduct further down the valley, the view will not be dissimilar to that enjoyed by its original occupants. Watling Street (now imaginatively renamed the A2) ran/runs from Richborough on the Channel coast to Canterbury and on to London, crossing rivers flowing south to north towards the Thames. Two of these rivers, the Medway and the Darent, have several villa sites in their valleys because of the closeness to the trade and transport route. Lullingstone is on the Darent, a small river which can dry up completely in summer. Not this year though; it was chuckling along busily, as little English rivers should, winding through willows and alders and with water meadows beyond. A really lovely spot.
Unfortunately, the exterior of the building we are presented with today does not proclaim past glories. It is a purely functional structure covering the villa site and housing the administrative offices. But no matter, the interest lies inside. The entrance, ticket office and shop occupy the north side, and from there you go into the site itself. The east, west and south sides have wooden walkways round them and there is also a second, upper level on the east side so you get various perspectives. What remains of the original walls is very low, so you can easily "see" into all the rooms from every angle. It's like looking down on a floor plan, and, like all floor plans in my experience, seems to make the building smaller without the height dimension.
So what are you looking at? Well, the stone-built construction dates from the first century AD and it was extended and the internal layout changed round at various times until it was a sizeable villa. Sadly it suffered a common fate, being destroyed by fire (in the early 5th century) and that was the end of it. Soil sliding down the hillside behind covered and protected it until it was excavated in the 1940s and 1950s. Nothing is known of the families who lived there, other than that they were reasonably well-to-do and worked the surrounding land with their domestic servants.
In truth, it requires a great deal of imagination, or a historian's detailed knowledge, to peer down into these dark rectangles of living space and try to populate them with life, love, argument and laughter. Some of the functions can only be guessed at, e.g. "probable bedroom", but the specific shapes of the bath suite are recognisable and connoisseurs of Roman remains will recognise the wobbly piles of hypocaust tiles. Part of a flight of steps leading down into a cellar is a nicely distinct feature. I also like the fact that the whole perimeter, of the main building at least, is distinguishable, unlike other, larger villas at Fishbourne and Bignor where only a part has been excavated. So far, interesting enough, but two specific features lift it into the "distinguished and unique" bracket.
The first is the mosaic floor in the triclinium, or dining room. The largest room in the house, it opened out into an apse at the top and was the room for receiving, feeding and impressing guests. Two lovely mosaics survive, almost complete, depicting mythical scenes of Europa and the Bull and Bellerophon and the Chimaera. Between the two scenes are decorative panels, including swastika shapes and key patterns. The colours are gold, deep red, ivory and black; the details are fine and the lines are flowing. I liked them very much. I've just had a look at what the guide book had to say and it was rather sniffy, admitting that the lines were "simple and effective" but pointing out the errors the mosaicist had made as experts like to do. Well the almost impossible to spot errors did not detract from them for me, and there was an excellent view from the upper floor right down on to them.
The second feature is rather more problematical. A clue can be found on the wall of a room just inside the entrance - a painting in a niche of a water nymph. During excavations thousands more pieces of painted plaster were found in the cellar and painstakingly reconstructed. One of the reconstructions is said to represent a chi-rho, a symbol for Christ, and the other a frieze of "orantes" or praying figures with arms upraised. From this evidence Lullingstone has been acknowledged as one of the earliest sites of Christianity in the UK, over 200 years before St Augustine arrived. But you look in vain for these relics during your visit here, for they are in the British Museum. All you can see at the place where they were found are photos and diagrams. Similarly two marble male heads have also been carted off, and copies made for display at Lullingstone. How irritating is this? The things that make the site unique are not here. Suddenly I have some sympathy with the Greeks' "give us back our Elgin Marbles". (Well only some. If they were in Greece I doubt I'd ever see them!).
On a recent visit to the British Museum for an exhibition I made a detour to see the Lullingstone stuff. It was, not surprisingly, in the room dedicated to Romano-British relics, of which there is a considerable amount, some of it truly stunning. So our paintings and heads were a little lost among the riches, and were difficult to appreciate out of context. The site at Lullingstone loses because its unique findings are elsewhere, and the British Museum loses because the significance is not fully brought out and there is no information about the site. A sign next to the display said "Donated by Kent County Council". Well thank you, KCC. The marble heads are labelled as only "on loan". Can we have them back?
And what of the paintings themselves? They are displayed with the original bits of painted plaster mounted on a board, and the missing bits added in. From a distance they look amazing, but close up you can see that the proportion of "actual" to "assumed" is something like 10/90. With the chi-rho image it is a little better, more like 30/70. In short, to an amateur like me it is almost inconceivable that they got from these bits to that completed image. A write-up, either at Lullingstone or the BM, on the process and deductions would be fascinating and instructive. However, we must just admire both the original artwork of byzantine-looking, haloed, robed figures, and the brilliance of the 20th century reconstruction.
Meanwhile, back at Lullingstone, there's more to see. A mausoleum behind the villa yielded several graves and grave goods of jewellery and a game with counters. Many pottery, bronze and glass containers were also found. These are well displayed with good descriptions, along with panels describing life and times and some very useful images of what the villa probably looked like. A short film on a screen hung over the site is well produced, and the relevant areas are illuminated as they are mentioned. Some kind of directional sound means it does not interfere with other visitors. If you take the kids, there is a good children's section with a quiz, dressing up clothes, and making mosaics out of tesserae. This mosaic-making is popular at Roman sites, but it's good fun. So I elbowed a couple of eight-year-olds out of the way and had a go.
If I have an issue with the whole layout, it's with the lighting. Obviously the site has to be covered, but does it have to be so dark? There is no natural light at all; instead there is a series of spotlights which dazzle but do not illuminate, and the remains of the villa are dark enough to start with. Trying to read my booklet I was either struggling to find an angle for it to be legible, or shielding my eyes from a piercing beam. Bignor and Fishbourne have glazed side walls which I would wholeheartedly recommend here.
Also a little strange was what is not visible. In the excavations of the 1940s they uncovered a granary, then covered it up again. It now lies under a patch of grass next to the car park. Up on Hadrian's Wall they get very excited about granaries. One is being uncovered at Vindolanda, and at Corbridge the two granaries with their huge buttresses, raised floors and mullioned windows are a pride and joy. Why not leave this one exposed? Despite all those years of Time Team there's much still mystifies me about archaeology
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So I have some moans, but overall it's well worth a visit. The whole site is small enough to get to grips with and the mosaics and finds are a delight. Stepping outside again one can't help but admire the location once more. It's easy to envisage the owner on his veranda in the evening forgetting for a while his worries about economic stability, education, health, rising prices. Nothing much changes. Least of all the view.
Lullingstone Roman Villa9
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