Folkestone Roman Villa

Folkestone Roman Villa, also referred to as the East Bay Site, is a villa built during the Roman Occupation of Britain, and is located in East Wear Bay near the port town of Folkestone, in Kent, England. The villa is situated on a cliff top overlooking the English Channel, with views of the French coast at Boulogne on a clear day. It is situated near the start of the North Downs Trackway, and the area has been inhabited for thousands of years, with archeological finds in the area and at the villa site dating back to the Mesolithic and Neolithic ages. The villa was built around A. D. 75, and was almost certainly built within the confines of a preexisting Iron Age settlement.

The villa was rebuilt and expanded in probably the second century A. D., this time as a more substantial structure with mosaics, a bath-house, and a second block, possibly connected by a courtyard. The villa was abandoned sometime in the third century, though archeological evidence suggests that it was briefly reoccupied in the fourth century.