Ghosts of Roman Britain

The Coin Under the Tongue

Romans didn't take chances with their dead. They tucked a coin under the tongue or in the closed fist to pay the ferryman's fee, because without it, they believed, the spirit couldn't cross over. It lingered instead, restless and hungry, a lemur haunting the edges of the living world. Chedworth spends October unpacking exactly what the Romans feared and how they fought it off.

The villa's own water shrine is the obvious place to start, a spring the Romans treated as home to a genius loci, a spirit worth keeping onside with offerings. Not far away, at the temple on West Hill in Uley, Roman Britons scratched curses onto sheets of lead, naming the people they suspected of stealing their cloaks and rings, and demanding the god make them suffer until the goods came back.

That kind of detail runs through trails and family activities across the whole site daily, from 1 October to 1 November. In the final week, over half term, a separate trail called Roman Ghost Investigator has children helping six restless spirits find their way across the River Styx.

Stand at that spring on a grey October afternoon and the Roman logic makes uncomfortable sense.

Included with admission.

Thursday 1 October 2026 - 1 November 2026 · Chedworth Roman Villa, Yanworth, near Cheltenham, Gloucestershire GL54 3LJ · Starts 10:00am