A TIME TEAM-style radar probe into the past made a sensational discovery in Leominster.

The foundations of a round building 56ft across, and with walls 10ft thick, were revealed below a car park, the former cloister site, on the north side of the Priory Church.

The "extraordinary circular feature" is of national significance and points to Leominster's huge importance and prestige in Saxon times, says leading Herefordshire historian Joe Hillaby, an expert on monastic sites.

"It is sensational," said Mr Hillaby.

Such a rotunda, with such thick and impressive walls, may have been the town's most important building - possibly a shrine for the bones and other relics of saints, he said.

According to ancient records, Leominster once had a wealth of holy relics.

Dig planned

And it was unusual in that the town's earliest church bore the names of three saints - "quite unique" for a non-cathedral site, he said.

He revealed details of the dramatic new discovery at a joint lecture with Peter Barker, a ground penetrating radar specialist.

The Friends of Leominster Priory commissioned Mr Barker's company, Stratascan, to carry out the radar survey on the site of the former cloister garth of the Benedictine Priory founded in Norman times.

Leominster's first monastic settlement was founded much earlier, in 660, and the round building was likely to date back to that era, said Mr Hillaby, expressing his hope that an archaeological dig would reveal more.

"The only way one is going to establish what is there is excavation," he said.

The lecture audience in the Priory Church heard that some of the earliest Christian churches were round like the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, built by Constantine in AD 330.

"That was the model for all of the (round church) building we see subsequently," said Mr Hillaby.

John Campbell, chairman of the Friends of Leominster Priory, said he was thrilled by the discovery which would help the Friends' efforts to put the Priory - and Leominster - "on the map."

l 2003 is proving to be a year of discovery in Leominster. More about the town of over 1,000 years ago was discovered in an archaeological dig on part of the site of a planned DIY store.

Stone footings of buildings and a causeway were revealed close to the former Priory precinct on the north side of the River Kenwater in the dig led by Huw Sherlock of Westhope.

A fuller report will appear in the Hereford Times this month.