Romano-British Toddington

 The Bedfordshire Historic Environment Record [HER] contains information on the county's historic buildings and landscapes and summaries of each entry can now be found online as part of the Heritage Gateway website.

Although it was bypassed by the Roman road of Watling Street there is considerable evidence of Roman settlement in Toddington. In the early 1990s excavation work in a field named Wickhern, adjacent to the site of an Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Sheepwalk HIll, uncovered eleven Roman cremation burials dating from the late 1st to early 2nd century AD. Structural remains of Roman date consisting of postholes and stakeholes were also found, along with ditches containing domestic rubbish [HER101]. It seems likely that an existing Iron Age site became Romanised and the existence of a concrete floor suggests that this was a substantial structure, probably a villa. The site continued to be occupied until at least the 6th century. Another possible villa site has been discovered at Town Close, where a block of red tile fragments cemented together may be the remains of a Roman hypercaust or under-floor heating system[HER11955]. A Roman-British enclosure where pottery suggests domestic activity was found just south of Toddington service area as part of the excavation of an Iron Age site prior to the widening of the M1 motorway [HER15839].

In the 19th century a copper alloy ring set with a carved red stone intaglio was found in the ditch marking the boundary between Chalgrave and Toddington. The carving is usually described as Apollo with a lyre, but has also been thought to be Achilles with a spear. As the ring was found near the source of a spring it may have been left as a votive offering [HER1419]. Six Roman coins were found near the church [HER6573] and a Roman coin of the Emperor Claudius (41-54 AD) was found in the Puzzle Garden to the north of the church [HER6816]. Other Roman finds include pottery near a footpath running from Cowbridge to Toddington [HER10983], and Roman cremation urns and spearheads in the Rectory Glebe land to the north of the village [HER11255].