One of the largest and best-preserved Roman villas yet discovered in Britain has been unearthed by archaeologists.

Built 1,800 years ago on the Isle of Wight, the building is as vast as an Olympic swimming pool and shaped like a church.

“It would have sung out the status of the owner,” Sir Barry Cunliffe, Emeritus Professor of European Archaeology at Oxford University and head of the excavation, told The Times yesterday. “It's a very impressive building, absolutely magnificent. It could have been seen for miles around.”

The discovery comes five years after readers of The Times helped to save spectacular mosaics from another Roman villa found on the same site in Brading, having them removed from the World Monuments Fund's list of endangered sites.