Crofton Roman Villa
A compact archaeological site preserving the ground plan and fabric of a Romano-British villa beside today’s Orpington station. Under a protective cover you read the building like a diagram—wall lines, room functions and heating—while small finds give texture to everyday rural life on the south-east London/Kent frontier.
Opening Hours
What's not to miss inside?
Hypocaust & Heated Rooms
Shows Roman underfloor heating in situ, with pilae (stacked tile columns) and flue channels that once circulated hot air from a furnace.Trace the route from stoke-hole to room and picture warm air lifting through floor voids—a villa’s ancient ‘central heating’.
📍 Shelter interior, central bays
Room Layout & Wall Footings
Low wall lines outline a multi-room dwelling typical of late Roman rural estates—living, service and heated spaces in one footprint.Walk the perimeter to see how corridors knit rooms together; compare small service cells to larger, heated reception spaces.
📍 Across the exposed plan
Building Materials & Small Finds
Roof tiles, floor tesserae, pottery and coins reveal construction methods, diet and trade links over several centuries.Match a fragment of box-flue tile to the wall flues you can see on site—evidence that heating also warmed the walls.
📍 Cases by the viewing walkway
Villas of the Darent & Cray Valleys
Places Crofton within a local network of Roman farmsteads and villas that supplied London and its hinterland.Use the map to spot sister sites like Lullingstone—Crofton reads as the ‘ordinary’ counterpart to a more luxurious villa.
📍 Interpretation panels
Inspire your Friends
- The villa’s heating survives as original pilae stacks—short columns of square tiles that propped a suspended floor above a hot-air void.
- Box-flue tiles on display show that hot air didn’t just warm floors; flues set into walls created early ‘radiators’ for the best rooms.
- Pottery and coin finds indicate occupation into the later Roman period, when many south-east villas expanded heated suites despite wider imperial instability.
