The early farmstead at Bancroft Villa

This new residence had three main rooms with painted mortar floors and painted walls. One room had hypocaust heating. A bath house was installed at the south end of the villa. The area north of the house was cobbled.

The farmstead included two barns, a granary, round-houses (perhaps for laborers, or for the traditionalists among the owners or managers), and a walled rectangular area thought to be a garden.

Another enclosure is thought to have been a kitchen garden, for sodden soil  preserved remains of brassicas, caper spurge, celery, coriander, mustard, and summer savory.

More than a century later, in about 340 CE, the main residence was remodeled and expanded to create a winged corridor villa. A portico was added, along with more rooms and a larger bath house. Most rooms were given mosaic floors. 

In the garden a pool with a long, low, ornamental, limestone-walled was added, fed with overflow water from the cold bath in the bath house. The water flowed into, and then drained out of, the pool through pipes of wood, tile, and lead.

Between the pool and the house was an area of rich soil that was probably a flower bed. Although no planting trenches were found in the large garden area, this may be because the soil was suitable without such trenches. At the southeast corner of the house, an octagonal structure was built that some think was a gazebo, while others identify it as a shrine.

Another walled enclosure, also southeast of the house, appears to have been a garden or an orchard. A knife of a kind used to prune fruit trees and grapevines was found there, similar to this one, illustrated in a 2nd century Roman mosaic. Roughly made ceramic pots with holes for drainage -- flower pots --  were also found.