A SHOCKING discovery has been made just yards from the car park burial site of King Richard III.
Archaeologists have unearthed a Roman shrine next to Leicester Cathedral, a stone's throw away from where Richard III was found a decade ago.
The discovery was made during the excavation of a former graveyard, and restoration of the Grade-II listed cathedral - a £12.7 million operation.
A team from the University of Leicester Archaeological Services uncovered the base of an altar stone, which has led to the theory this site was used to worship gods and goddesses.
Mathew Morris, Excavation Director, wrote in a blog post reported on by The Times: “Given the combination of a subterranean structure with painted walls and the altar we have found, one interpretation, which seemed to grow in strength as we excavated more, could be that this was a room linked with the worship of a god or gods.
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"What we’re likely looking at here is a private place of worship, either a family shrine or a cult room where a small group of individuals shared in private worship.
“Underground chambers like this have often been linked with fertility and mystery cults and the worship of gods such as Mithras, Cybele, Bacchus, Dionysius and the Egyptian goddess Isis.
"Sadly, no evidence of an inscription survived on our altar, but it would have been the primary focus for sacrifice and offerings to the gods, and a key part of their religious ceremonies.”
A Roman building was previously found in 1861 below the cathedral tower when it was undergoing renovations.
This sparked the theory that a Roman temple may have stood there centuries ago - and now this new evidence suggests it to be true.
The team have also uncovered more than 1,100 burials and the first Anglo-Saxon coin found in Leicester for almost two decades.
The burial sites range from the 11th to mid-19th century.
In 2012, King Richard III's skeleton was famously found under a Leicester car park.
The corpse had a metal arrow in its back and severe trauma to its skull.
The following February, lead archaeologist Richard Buckley, of the University of Leicester, said tests proved the remains were the king’s “beyond reasonable doubt”.
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Richard was killed in the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485.
The skeleton had been found in the same area of Grey Friars church and where Richard III was recorded to have been buried after his death during the Wars of the Roses.
