A Roman villa was typically a farmhouse or country house in the territory of the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire , sometimes reaching extravagant proportions.
49-528: Cranborne Chase ( grid reference ST970180 ) is an area of central southern England , straddling the counties Dorset , Hampshire and Wiltshire . It is part of the Cranborne Chase and West Wiltshire Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB). The area is dominated by, and often considered to be synonymous with, a chalk downland plateau . Part of the English Chalk Formation , it
98-598: A biological Site of Special Scientific Interest , notification initially taking place in 1975. As some of the wooded areas in the chase are centuries old, they possess a diverse ground flora that is associated with such sites. The area is one of the richest in southern England for numbers of lichen species; over 160 have been recorded. 50°57′40″N 2°02′38″W / 50.961°N 2.044°W / 50.961; -2.044 Ordnance Survey National Grid The Ordnance Survey National Grid reference system ( OSGB ), also known as British National Grid ( BNG ),
147-520: A 100 m square. For example, the grid reference of the 100 m square containing the summit of Ben Nevis is NN 166 712 . (Grid references may be written with or without spaces; e.g., also NN166712.) NN has an easting of 200 km and northing of 700 km, so the OSGB36 National Grid location for Ben Nevis is at 216600, 771200. Grid references may also be quoted as a pair of numbers: eastings then northings in metres, measured from
196-485: A long history with many earthworks and archaeology from the Neolithic age onwards. The dense woodland originally covering the downs would have gradually been cleared by the first farmers, but would have grown back repeatedly over the centuries as soils became exhausted and the agricultural carrying capacity of the land was exceeded several times over the course of six millennia. Much of the area therefore remained wooded from
245-492: A military grid. Four of these largest squares contain significant land area within Great Britain: S, T, N and H. The O square contains a tiny area of North Yorkshire , Beast Cliff at OV 0000 , almost all of which lies below mean high tide. For the second letter, each 500 km square is subdivided into 25 squares of size 100 km by 100 km, each with a letter code from A to Z (again omitting I) starting with A in
294-461: A monastery in the ruins of a villa at Subiaco that had belonged to Nero . Around 590, Saint Eligius was born in a highly placed Gallo-Roman family at the 'villa' of Chaptelat near Limoges , in Aquitaine . The abbey at Stavelot was founded ca 650 on the domain of a former villa near Liège and Vézelay Abbey had a similar founding. As late as 698, Willibrord established Echternach Abbey at
343-723: A point in the Atlantic Ocean well to the west of Great Britain. In Cornwall , the WGS 84 longitude lines are about 70 metres east of their OSGB 36 equivalents, this value rising gradually to about 120 m east on the east coast of East Anglia . The WGS 84 latitude lines are about 70 m south of the OSGB 36 lines in South Cornwall , the difference diminishing to zero in the Scottish Borders , and then increasing to about 50 m north on
392-479: A slightly larger area than just the chalk plateau. Early written records of this definition include a jury verdict at New Sarum in 1246 and the Quo Warranto of Edward I, issued in or around 1280. Over time this estate shrank, and the term has also been used to describe a smaller remnant area of around 10 miles (16 km) by 4 miles (6.4 km) immediately to the west of Cranborne village. A more recent usage of
441-518: A vignette in a frescoed wall at the House of Marcus Lucretius Fronto in Pompeii still shows a row of seafront villas, all with porticos along the front, some rising up in porticoed tiers to an altana at the top that would catch a breeze. Villas were centres of a variety of economic activity such as mining, pottery factories, or horse raising such as those found in northwestern Gaul . Villas specialising in
490-516: Is a system of geographic grid references , distinct from latitude and longitude , whereby any location in Great Britain can be described in terms of its distance from the origin (0, 0), which lies to the west of the Isles of Scilly . The Ordnance Survey (OS) devised the national grid reference system, and it is heavily used in its survey data, and in maps based on those surveys, whether published by
539-679: Is adjacent to Salisbury Plain and the West Wiltshire Downs in the north, and the Dorset Downs to the south west. The highest point is Win Green Down , in Wiltshire, at 910 feet (280 m). Historically a medieval hunting forest , the area is also noted for its Neolithic and Bronze age archaeology and its rural agricultural character. As an informally defined region, the boundaries of Cranborne Chase vary depending on usage. When defined as
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#1732847971191588-461: Is applied. This creates two lines of longitude about 180 km east and west of the central meridian along which the local scale factor equals 1, i.e. map scale is correct. Inside these lines the local scale factor is less than 1, with a minimum of 0.04% too small at the central meridian. Outside these lines the local scale factor is greater than 1, and is about 0.04% too large near the east and west coasts. Grid north and true north are only aligned on
637-548: Is published by the Ordnance Survey is called the National Grid Transformation OSTN15. This models the detailed distortions in the 1936–1962 retriangulation, and achieves backwards compatibility in grid coordinates to sub-metre accuracy. The difference between the coordinates on different datums varies from place to place. The longitude and latitude positions on OSGB 36 are the same as for WGS 84 at
686-592: Is the system commonly used for the Channel Islands . European-wide agencies also use UTM when mapping locations, or may use the Military Grid Reference System (MGRS), or variants of it. The first letter of the British National Grid is derived from a larger set of 25 squares of size 500 km by 500 km, labelled A to Z, omitting one letter (I) (refer diagram below), previously used as
735-461: The 2nd Earl , sold it in 1692 to Thomas Freke (d. 1701), who bequeathed it to Elizabeth Freke (the wife of his kinsman, also Thomas Freke ) and her father Thomas Pile, with reversion to George Pitt should she die without children. Pitt inherited Cranborne Chase from her in 1714, and it passed from father to son in the Pitt family to his great-grandson George Pitt, 2nd Baron Rivers , after whose death it
784-614: The English Channel halfway between Dover and Calais , the ED50 longitude lines are about 20 m east of the OSGB36 equivalents, and the ED50 latitude lines are about 150 m south of the OSGB36 ones. Roman villa Nevertheless, the term "Roman villa" generally covers buildings with the common features of being extra-urban (i.e. located outside urban settlements, unlike the domus which
833-609: The English Channel which lies between the island of Jersey and the French port of St. Malo ). Over the Airy ellipsoid a straight line grid, the National Grid, is placed with a new false origin to eliminate negative numbers, creating a 700 km by 1300 km grid. This false origin is located south-west of the Isles of Scilly. In order to minimize the overall scale error, a factor of 2499/2500
882-662: The Isle of Man ). The Irish grid reference system is a similar system created by the Ordnance Survey of Ireland and the Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland for the island of Ireland. The Irish Transverse Mercator (ITM) coordinate reference system was adopted in 2001 and is now the preferred coordinate reference system across Ireland. ITM is based on the Universal Transverse Mercator coordinate system (UTM), used to provide grid references for worldwide locations, and this
931-566: The Middle Ages until World War II . Analysis of remains found in some of the Bronze Age burial mounds, by experts at Bournemouth University , has revealed that many of the bones had small holes drilled in then, enabling them, it is hypothesised, to have been articulated by means of wooden pegs, i.e. the skeletons were prevented from falling apart during repeated removal and re-burial. There are many Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments, including
980-451: The Roman Road that runs across the downs from Dorchester to Old Sarum . The downs have been sparsely populated since Saxon times, largely preserving archaeology until World War II when the need for agricultural land outweighed the archaeological importance. It was here that Augustus Pitt Rivers developed modern archaeological field work in the 19th century. The downs are named after
1029-561: The Villa of the Papyri and its library at Herculaneum preserved by the ashfall from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79. Areas within easy reach of Rome offered cool lodgings in the heat of summer. Hadrian's Villa at Tibur ( Tivoli ) was in an area popular with Romans of rank. Cicero had several villas. Pliny the Younger described his villas in his letters. The Romans invented the seaside villa:
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#17328479711911078-545: The villa urbana in Central Italy. A third type of villa was a large commercial estate called latifundium which produced and exported agricultural produce; such villas might lack luxuries (e.g. Cato) but many were very sumptuous (e.g. Varro). The whole estate of a villa was also called a praedium , fundus or sometimes, rus . A villa rustica had 2 or 3 parts: Under the Empire, many patrician villas were built on
1127-614: The B3081 climbing Zig Zag Hill on its northwestern flanks, and Win Green (277 m). Nearby, another prominent top, Melbury Hill (263 m) above Melbury Abbas , "appears almost like an island rising above the flat, sea-like expanses of" Compton Abbas airfield. Further south are two more summits on an outlier of the Chase that define its southern limits: Hambledon and Hod Hills . An area of 1,115 acres (451 ha) of Cranborne Chase has been notified as
1176-534: The Crown, and was granted, with other lands forming the feudal barony of Gloucester, to Robert Fitzhamon in 1083. This passed to his son-in-law Robert, 1st Earl of Gloucester . Ownership of the chase passed through successive Earls of Gloucester until the death of Gilbert de Clare, 8th Earl of Gloucester in 1314. The chase passed to his sister Elizabeth de Clare (d. 1360), and thence to her granddaughter Elizabeth de Burgh, 4th Countess of Ulster (d. 1363). The Countess
1225-458: The Ordnance Survey or by commercial map producers. Grid references are also commonly quoted in other publications and data sources, such as guide books and government planning documents. A number of different systems exist that can provide grid references for locations within the British Isles : this article describes the system created solely for Great Britain and its outlying islands (including
1274-577: The Roman style may be called a "villa" by modern scholars. Two kinds of villas were generally described: Other examples of villae urbanae were the middle and late Republican villas that encroached on the Campus Martius , at that time on the edge of Rome, the one at Rome's Parco della Musica or at Grottarossa in Rome, and those outside the city walls of Pompeii which demonstrate the antiquity and heritage of
1323-468: The School's closure in 1990. Cranborne Chase is part of a National Character Area (No. 134), " Dorset Downs and Cranborne Chase", designated by Natural England . The landscape of Cranborne Chase is remarkably varied, its most dramatic scenery being near the boundary between Dorset and Wiltshire where the chalk downland rises sharply to the rounded summits of Breeze Hill (262 m), with the hairpin bends of
1372-520: The central meridian (400 km easting) of the grid which is 2° W (OSGB36) and approx. 2° 0′ 5″ W ( WGS 84 ). A geodetic transformation between OSGB 36 and other terrestrial reference systems (like ITRF2000 , ETRS89 , or WGS 84 ) can become quite tedious if attempted manually. The most common transformation is called the Helmert datum transformation , which results in a typical 7 m error from true. The definitive transformation from ETRS89 that
1421-756: The chalk plateau, it is clearly bounded by escarpments which face the valleys of the Blackmore Vale to the west, the Vale of Wardour to the north, and the Hampshire Avon to the east. To the south the chalk gently slopes, giving way more subtly to the Dorset Heaths landscape around Verwood and Wimborne Minster . The name is derived from its historic use as a medieval hunting forest, which at its height covered an area bounded by Salisbury , Shaftesbury , Blandford Forum , Wimborne Minster and Ringwood , incorporating
1470-488: The coasts ( villae maritimae ) such as those on picturesque sites overlooking the Bay of Naples like the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum , or on the isle of Capri , at Circeii and at Antium . Wealthy Romans also escaped the summer heat in the hills within easy reach of Rome , especially around Frascati and including the imperial Hadrian's Villa -palace at Tivoli . Cicero allegedly possessed no fewer than seven villas,
1519-472: The first century BC, the "classic" villa took many architectural forms, with many examples employing an atrium or peristyle for interior spaces open to light and air. Villas were often furnished with heated bath suites ( thermae ) and many would have had under-floor heating known as the hypocaust . The late Roman Republic witnessed an explosion of villa construction in central Italy (current regions of Toscana, Umbria, Lazio, and Campania), especially in
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1568-514: The henge monuments at Knowlton and the remains of a number of Iron Age settlements on the downs, most notably the hill fort at Badbury Rings ( Vindocladia ). There is a Roman villa which has been dug by archaeological television programme Time Team . During the Saxon invasion of England the Romano-British kept the invaders out of Dorset by building Bokerley Dyke , a defensive ditch, across
1617-551: The meaning of "villa" is by Varro (116–27 BC) dating from the end of the Republican period, which is used for most modern considerations. But Roman authors (e.g. Columella [4-70 AD], Cato the Elder [234-149 BC]) wrote in different times, with different objectives and for aristocratic readers and hence had specific interpretations of villa . The Romans built many kinds of villas and any country house with some decorative features in
1666-449: The north coast of Scotland . (If the lines are further east , then the longitude value of any given point is further west . Similarly, if the lines are further south, the values will give the point a more northerly latitude.) The smallest datum shift is on the west coast of Scotland and the greatest in Kent . These two datums are not both in general use in any one place, but for a point in
1715-429: The north-west corner to Z in the south-east corner. These squares are outlined in light grey on the "100km squares" map, with those containing land lettered. The central (2° W) meridian is shown in red. Within each square, eastings and northings from the south west corner of the square are given numerically. For example, NH0325 means a 1 km square whose south-west corner is 3 km east and 25 km north from
1764-512: The oldest of them, which he inherited, near Arpinum in Latium. Pliny the Younger had three or four which are well known from his descriptions. By the 4th century, "villa" could simply connote an agricultural holding: Jerome translated in the Gospel of Mark (xiv, 32) chorion , describing the olive grove of Gethsemane , with villa, without an inference that there were any dwellings there at all. By
1813-522: The seagoing export of olive oil to Roman legions in Germany became a feature of the southern Iberian province of Hispania Baetica . In some cases villas survived the fall of the Empire into the Early Middle Ages ; large working villas were donated by aristocrats and territorial magnates to individual monks, often to become the nucleus of famous monasteries . For example, Saint Benedict established
1862-427: The south-west corner of square NH. A location can be indicated to varying resolutions numerically, usually from two digits in each coordinate (for a 1 km square) through to five (for a 1 m square); in each case the first half of the digits is for the first coordinate and the second half for the other. The most common usage is the six figure grid reference , employing three digits in each coordinate to determine
1911-405: The south-west to NN400900 in the north-east) the abbreviated grid reference 166712 is equivalent to NN166712. If working with more than one Landranger sheet, this may also be given as 41/166712. Alternatively, sometimes numbers instead of the two-letter combinations are used for the 100×100 km squares. The numbering follows a grid index where the tens denote the progress from West to East and
1960-542: The southwest corner of the SV square. 13 digits may be required for locations in Orkney and further north. For example, the grid reference for Sullom Voe Oil Terminal in the Shetland islands may be given as HU396753 or 439668,1175316 . Another, distinct, form of all-numeric grid reference is an abbreviated alphanumeric reference where the letters are simply omitted, e.g. 166712 for
2009-699: The standard projection for Ordnance Survey maps. The Airy ellipsoid is a regional best fit for Britain; more modern mapping tends to use the GRS80 ellipsoid used by the Global Positioning System (the Airy ellipsoid assumes the Earth to be about 1 km smaller in diameter than the GRS80 ellipsoid, and to be slightly less flattened). The British maps adopt a transverse Mercator projection with an origin (the "true" origin) at 49° N , 2° W (an offshore point in
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2058-467: The summit of Ben Nevis. Unlike the numeric references described above, this abbreviated grid reference is incomplete; it gives the location relative to an OS 100×100 km square, but does not specify which square. It is often used informally when the context identifies the OS 2-letter square. For example, within the context of a location known to be on OS Landranger sheet 41 (which extends from NN000500 in
2107-594: The term, used since 2014 by the Cranborne Chase and West Wiltshire Downs AONB Partnership of local authorities, has been to promote the much larger AONB area simply as "Cranborne Chase AONB". This usage includes a large area outside of the more established landscape and historical definitions of Cranborne Chase, including the West Wiltshire Downs and an area of greensand landscape on the Somerset-Wiltshire border around Longleat and Stourhead . The downland has
2156-574: The units from South to North. In the north of Scotland, the numbering is modified: the 100 km square to the north of 39 is numbered N30; the square to the north of 49 is N40, etc. The grid is based on the OSGB36 datum (Ordnance Survey Great Britain 1936, based on the Airy 1830 ellipsoid ), and was introduced after the retriangulation of 1936–1962 . It replaced the Cassini Grid which had previously been
2205-533: The village Cranborne , founded by the Saxons, which had a manor house and a small monastery . The word "chase" comes from the hunts , frequented by royalty (including Kings John , Henry VIII and James I ), which took place on the downs. The first known owner of the chase is thought to have been Brictric . His possessions were confiscated by Queen Matilda , wife of William the Conqueror ; on her death, it passed to
2254-504: The years following the dictatorship of Sulla (81 BC). For example the villa at Settefinestre from the 1st century BC was the centre of one of the latifundia involved in large-scale agricultural production in Etruria . In the imperial period villas sometimes became quite palatial, such as the villas built on seaside slopes overlooking the Gulf of Naples at Baiae and those at Stabiae and
2303-566: Was disfranchised. Much of the Chase is still owned by large estates such as Kingston Lacy . Cranborne Chase School , a former boarding school for girls, was based at two locations in Cranborne Chase: at Crichel House near the village of Moor Crichel in Dorset from 1946 to 1961, and then at New Wardour Castle in the settlement of Wardour (near the village of Tisbury ) in Wiltshire , until
2352-566: Was inside them) and residential, with accommodation for the owner. The definition also changed with time: the earliest examples are mostly humble farmhouses in Italy, while from the Republican period a range of larger building types are included. The present meaning of "villa" is partially based on the fairly numerous ancient Roman written sources and on archaeological remains, though many of these are poorly preserved. The most detailed ancient text on
2401-468: Was succeeded by her daughter Philippa, 5th Countess of Ulster (d. 1382), wife of Edmund Mortimer, 3rd Earl of March . The chase was owned by successive Earls of March until 1461, when the last Earl was crowned as Edward IV of England . Cranborne Chase remained crown property until 1616, when it was granted to Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury . His great-grandson, the 3rd Earl , sold it to Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury in 1671. His son,
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