Located on the southern edge of the Forest of Dean with views of the River Severn, the Romano-British temple at Lydney was excavated by archaeologist Sir Mortimer Wheeler in 1928-9.
The temple occupies part of an Iron Age fortified hill, nearby is another hill crowned by the broken walls of a medieval castle.
The temple was occupied in the late Roman period, and is unusual in that it operated as a pagan site at a time when the official religion of Rome was Christianity. A recent reevaluation of the site suggests that it was a popular place for pilgrimage as early as the second century.
The site for the temple may have been chosen as it offered a clear view of the Severn Bore. The mosaic floor of the temple included images of dolphins, fish, and sea monsters.
It is possible that the temple is orientated towards the sunrise of the winter solstice. The temple was dedicated to the gods Nuada (Nodens), and Silvanus. Nodens was equivalent to the Welsh Nudd, and Lludd Llaw Eraint (Lludd of the Silver Hand). Lludd’s name survives in the place name of Lydney.
Many votive offerings have been discovered, indicating not only the site’s popularity, but that it was an important centre for healing. Nine small images of dogs were found, some resembling greyhounds, which may have been associated with the god Silvanus, the leaf-crowned Roman god of woodlands.
The buildings of the temple complex comprise of three main elements beside the temple. The largest building is believed to have been a guest house for visitors; next to that stood a bath house (fed by water from a cistern, the remains of which are visible a little to the north). The third (long) building is thought to have been an Aesculepia, a dormitory where pilgrims would receive healing while they dreamed of the temple’s gods.
Many of the finds from the excavations are on display in the small museum in Lydney Park House.
J.R.R. Tolkien assisted in the post excavation work by providing interpretations for the many inscribed tablets discovered. He would have had access to the Wheelers' reports, and Rev. William Hiley Bathhurst's account of his own earler excavation, Roman Antiquiteis at Lydney Park. Both of which give glimpses of the area's rich folklore.
One of the tablets Tolkien worked on calls upon the gods of the temple to assist in the returning of a stolen ring.
The hill on which the temple stands was known to the Anglo-Saxons as Dwarf’s Hill, the name used throughout the excavation report. The ancient Roman iron mines beneath it (said to extend far out, deep beneath the Forest of Dean) were believed to have been originally dug by dwarves. Local tradition spoke of them abandoning the mines and ruins above to fearsome goblins, much like the mines of Tolkien's Moria. Even today Dwarf's Hill is a place to be shunned after dark.
The name of the temple may be found in The Ravenna Cosmography, a record of over 300 place-names from Roman Britain. The locations of many have been identified with confidence, but there are a few that are less certain. One of these is Nemetobala, which from its context would have been located in Monmouthshire or Gloucestershire, west of the Severn. The authors of The Place-Names of Roman Britain, A.L.F. Rivet and Colin Smith (Batsford, 1979), suggest that Nemetobala is the name of the temple at Lydney.
They go on to explain that Nemeto = sacred grove or temple. Bala, in several related forms of Celtic origin, means hill, peak, summit, steep hill, etc. So, Nemetobala would be temple-hill, grove-hill, or hill-sanctuary.
