Of all of the structures we know about in Roman Lincolnshire, the bath house at Denton villa is one of my personal favourites. The small bath house, associated with a modest villa and large enough for only a couple of people to use at once, speaks at a more personal level than the grandest country houses and large public baths evidenced at other sites. To give the bath house its context, we have to begin by looking at the development of the villa itself. The villa at Denton, about 4 miles south west of Grantham, has been known about since the 18th Century.
The great Lincolnshire antiquarian William Stukeley described how plowing in February or uncovered a mosaic, and follow up investigations uncovered various walls and human bone Stukeley In a second mosaic was discovered by William Fowler of Winterton, the builder and antiquarian.
The first systematic excavations at the site took place in Smith , and revealed the sequence of development of the villa, which can be divided into three primary phases. The earliest phase was a timber building of aisled-hall form, eighteen large timber posts holding up the roof, constructed no earlier than the late 3rd Century.
The second phase saw the western half of the structure rebuilt in stone and internal rooms created. The third phase saw further rebuilding in stone at the eastern end, but the evidence was more fragmentary as the eastern end of the building had not survived as well. The known mosaics from the villa are all from the western end, with five rooms believed to have contained mosaic floors.
It is a frustration of the site that Smith refers to room numbers in his reports but none of his published plans actually reference these numbers and we are left attempting to reconstruct his findings through room measurements.
