Newly discovered Port Talbot Pompeii' may have been Roman centre for agriculture

"the discovery of the footprint of a large Roman villa in a country park on the outskirts of Port Talbot gives an intriguing fresh insight into life here centuries before heavy industry took hold. Found below the surface of Margam country park and close to the M4, the presence of the villa which has been labelled Port Talbot's Pompeii suggests the area was not on the fringes of the Roman empire but very much part of it and may have been an important agricultural centre."

"An interpretation of the ground-penetrating survey conducted at Margam country park. Illustration: TerraDat It's a lifetime find for me, the park and the community, said Langlands, the project lead for ArchaeoMargam. We suspected there was something Romano-British there but we didn't for a moment think it would be as significant as this. When I saw the footprint of this site, I was like: My word, this is really big.'"

"It changes the story. Until now Wales in the Romano-British period has, for the most part, been about legionary forts, Roman practice camps, marching camps, Roman roads. It's always been around conquest, which hangs like a lead weight around Wales's cultural identity in many respects but this paints a different picture. This wasn't necessarily a frontier zone, an unstable place. The villa suggests, to use a problematic word, that it was civilised."

A large Roman villa footprint has been found beneath the surface of Margam country park on the outskirts of Port Talbot, near the M4. Ground-penetrating radar suggests the hidden structure could be the largest villa of its kind in Wales. The villa sits within an enclosure roughly 43 metres by 55 metres and includes a substantial south-east building interpreted as a large agricultural storage building or a meeting hall. The discovery suggests the area was integrated into the Roman empire and may have been an important agricultural centre rather than a frontier zone. Project leads described the find as transformative and unexpectedly significant.

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