Interested in Folk Lore? The village is famous for the discovery of a Roman Villa, which archaeologists excavated at Hinton St Mary in 1963.  Following the dig, witnesses in the village claimed to have seen the ghost of a tall man in a pale cloak, or toga, striding through the village, stopping outside the White Horse. This phantom, possibly the oldest in England, then disappears into a sidewall.

The mosaic pavement from the Roman Villa is now with the British Museum in London. In one of the roundels of this mosaic there is what is thought to be the earliest representation of Christ. He is portrayed as clean-shaven. It is the only such portrait found anywhere in the Roman Empire. The discovery of those ancient remains occurred when the village blacksmith was digging a hole in the garden for the washing line post!