Roman roadside settlement and rural landscape at Brentford

Excavations in Syon Park, Brentford, have made a substantial contribution to our knowledge of this Roman rural settlement on the London-Silchester road, by a ford across the Thames.

The site yielded a well-dated sequence - from the mid 1st to early 5th century AD - including occupation deposits and two 2nd-century timber buildings destroyed by fire, as well as details of the main road and adjacent field system.

These and a large assemblage of finds, including a surgical instrument and a roundel depicting the Medusa, provide a rare glimpse of life in the countryside in the hinterland of Londinium.

A detailed overview of Roman Brentford (the first to be published since 1978) is included.