The writer on the Isle of Wight in the Victoria County Histories says:
"Not quite the whole of the villa probably has been explored; the baths, for instance, are not yet found. But we have ample details, and can form a general judgment. The villa at Brading was neither of the best period nor of special size and splendour, but neither was it a farmhouse. It must have been the residence of men of the upper classes, owners (we may suppose) of broad acres all around. They may not have possessed great wealth or many articles of luxury; they may have carried such things away with them when they abandoned the house. Some time in the dim period of which we know so little, early in the fifth century, the place was burnt by enemy or accident, and the Romano-British life which it had sheltered came utterly to an end."
If there are no baths there is at all events an excellent specimen of a hypocaust, or Roman heating arrangement, to be seen. The chief interest for visitors, however, lies in the well-preserved specimens of mosaic flooring which have been said by some authorities to be among the finest of their kind in England; this view, however, is not held by the writer quoted above, who says: "The Brading mosaics are elaborate and ambitious; let us add that their execution does not wholly lack spirit. But as artistic achievements they are not successful. They must unquestionably be ranked beneath the best specimens of mosaics found both in England and abroad."
However this may be to the specialist, the designs are exceedingly interesting to the ordinary observer, who will gaze with great delight at the quaint representation of Orpheus playing on the lyre and surrounded by animals, as well as at the pastoral designs in the other rooms. A small charge is made for entrance, and the lesser objects are preserved in cases for more convenient inspection.
Other Roman remains, including coins, have been found at many places in the island, and the traces of a villa at Carisbrooke. Of remains other than Roman there are not many, the principal find being that at Arreton, where, at the opening of some barrows on the downs, knife-blades, spearheads, and coarse pottery of the Anglo-Saxon times were unearthed beside the skeletons with which they had been buried. At Rowborough there are some very curious remains of "pit-dwellings." In the first of the valleys where these are to be found there are ten pits, each twenty to thirty feet wide and more or less circular. Some are now filled up with a growth of brushwood. Above the last pit a long excavation runs up the valley for some twenty or thirty yards, and this may be an old road. A good deal higher up there is a large basin-like excavation. In the second valley there are seven pits, and in the third about eighteen. It is possible that these may not be dwellings, but remains of very early attempts at chalk-getting.
