In answer to your question, Christine, no, it's not likely to be
published anywhere - it's 'reasonable speculation' rather than any new
excavation. However both I and my colleague who is also about to leave
the Museum are determined to make trouble by pointing out to influential
people how interesting the site is.
And indeed becomes more so! I dropped by at our event at the Rye
yesterday afternoon whereupon I was taken by our Education Officer and
shown cropmarks a couple of hundred yards from the villa site which he
had never noticed before after thirty years of living in the town. They
are clearly over yet another building within the complex (though
obviously all these structures are not necessarily contemporaneous). And
they aren't subtle, either - very obvious rectangle shapes, right-angled
corners, and even the signs of hearths! How can it be that after three
hundred years of people being aware of the Roman remains on this site,
nobody has spotted these things?
James Rattue
Assistant Museums Officer
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