During this period, the site appears to have been substantially redeveloped, with the network of boundary and drainage ditches laid out anew, and the relatively modest ancillary buildings in the villa’s ‘farmyard’ replaced by large and orderly structures ranged along the south side of the site.

The late Roman period appears to have seen consolidation and extension of the villa’s farmyard plot. The complexes of post-and-beam buildings were demolished, to be replaced by two much more substantial buildings on the same axis, one stone-built, or at least on wholly stone footings, the other supported on a double row of large posts. The small stone building was also demolished and its rubble used to infill redundant ditches whose pattern was being laid out anew; if this building had in fact been a watermill, it could no longer have functioned, as the late Roman phase ditch system cut across the putative mill-leat. Stones and roof tiles from demolished buildings were also used as post-pads and post-packing during the construction of the new buildings. The new ditch layout appears to have been a success as a drainage scheme, as the large post-based structure stood in the wettest area of the site, where no indication of earlier buildings was found. This programme of redevelopment appears to correspond to a phase of rebuilding and embellishment identified by Daniels as taking place at the villa itself, as some of the re-used or infilled rubble incorporates tesserae from the floors of a high-status dwelling and box flue tiles from its underfloor heating system,while painted wall plaster displaying a high level of craftsmanship had been discarded in some features.

One rectangular stone building, on a north-west to south-east alignment (perpendicular to the building found during the evaluation) was exposed in the south-western corner of one area. The building appeared to have undergone at least one phase of redevelopment, presumably commensurate with that noted during the excavation of the villa, as the lines of robbed-out walls were found within the footprint of walls existing to the machined surface level, potentially indicating that the building stone had been re-used for reconstruction of the same building as well as being taken away for re-use after the building had been abandoned. Two internal dividing walls were observed, one with the remains of a floor surface on either side. Unlike the substantial walls of well-fitted blocks that characterised the Roman structure encountered by the evaluation, the walls exposed in thisbuilding were relatively slight, and constructed of roughly dressed stone blocks and rubble, suggesting that they were of lesser significance, probably the agricultural outbuildings of the known villa. The cemetery encountered in another area extended into this part,and several burials took place within the footprint of the building, including one where the base of a grave was formed by the upper surface of a wall, on which a skeleton lay. The building was also disturbed by later ditches of probable early medieval and medieval date, a circular well cut through one of the interior robber trenches and the construction of the modern school. During the excavation, the decision was taken to preserve this building in situ, and excavation in this area ceased; inhumations already exposed within the building footprint were reburied, and no further recording took place. As little excavation work took place, there is little dating evidence for the building: it had clearly been levelled by the time the cemetery was instituted, but it is otherwise dated by a single sherd of 3rd-century or later pottery retrieved from a layer within the building footprint. The building has been assigned to the late Roman period by analogy with the securely dated stone structure found during the evaluation, and with the original villa discovered by Charles Daniels.

R. D. Savage and J. Sleap, 2015, Proposed Residential Development, Former Minster School Site, Church Street, Southwell, Nottinghamshire: Archaeological Excavation Report (Unpublished document). SNT5953.