The Villa Urbana was built using only tools and materials that were known to the Romans. The building of the town house had a 6 month deadline and was filmed for a Channel 4 television series called ‘Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day’. The villa is now on display to visitors of Wroxeter Roman City.

From the English Heritage guidebook:

In Roman times, labour was plentiful and cheap. This town house, however, was built by a core team of six modern builders with a range of skills, who were sometimes supplemented by local volunteers. Surveying was done using a groma, a simple instrument the Romans used to lay out straight lines and angles, timbers and stone were both shaped by hand: and human muscle-power took the place of cranes and wheelbarrows, as it would have done in Roman times. As well as avoiding modern power tools and technologies the builders had to turn their hands to many different tasks, including the mosaic and wall-paintings, which in the Roman period would have been the work of highly skilled specialists.