Excavation by the Upper Nene Archaeological Society since 1979 provides evidence that the area close to Piddington has been occupied for ca.10,000 years.

A late Iron Age settlement originated around the middle of the 1st century BC where people lived in round houses inside an enclosure with an outer ditch for protection.

The site was occupied from about 50 BC, with circular buildings followed by a proto-villa of ca.70 AD and then a sequence of rectangular stone-built structures, culminating in a simple cottage type villa.

From the 2nd century this became an increasingly large winged-corridor-type villa with courtyard (indeed, a 2nd-century well on the site is probably the largest stone-lined well in Roman Britain and has produced a wealth of environmental and other evidence).

On 4 September 2004, Tony Robinson, of Channel 4's Time Team officially opened Piddington Villa Museum.

[2][3] The Upper Nene Archaeological Society,[1] known as "UNAS", originally bought the redundant, and de-consecrated, Wesleyan Chapel in 1992.

Apart from significant archaeological material it houses displays interpreting 500 years of life at the settlement, including: a detailed model of the villa, as in the later 2nd century; a full-sized mannequin of a possible owner of the villa called Tiberius Claudius Severus, with an audio presentation; a full-scale reconstruction of sections of a typical roof and hypocaust, the Roman heating system.