the room is thought to have been 8 feet. When the villa was abandoned, the Basement Room was especially affected. Much of the walls and stairs were stripped of their materials, and were not replaced until the reoccupation of the villa. During the reoccupation, the walls of the Basement Room were redecorated and other details such as pottery were added. Partially destroyed by the fire, parts of the mosaic and the plaster from the room above fell into the Basement Room providing an abundance of intact evidence for the villa, which remained untouched until the beginning of the Lullingstone excavations in 1949. Pagan shrine and Christian chapel One room of the building had been used as both a pagan shrine and, later, as a Christian chapel, one of the earliest in Britain. Along with the Christian chapel, there were three or four other rooms that were also used for Christian purposes including a possible Antechamber and a Vestibule. The original pagan shrine room was dedicated to local water deities, and a wall painting depicting three water nymphs dating from this period can still be seen in a niche in the room. Just after the 3rd century, this niche had been covered over, as the whole room had been redecorated with white plaster painted with red bands, and two busts of male figures had been placed in the room. Some scholars have theorised that at this point the inhabitants focused their worship on household deities and ancestor spirits, largely abandoning the worship of the water deities. In the 4th century the room above the pagan shrine was apparently converted to Christian use, with painted plaster on the walls, including a row of figures of standing worshipers (orans), and a characteristic Christian Chi-rho symbol. Some of the paintings are now on display in the British Museum. According to English Heritage, which maintains the site: The overall purpose of the chapel other than worship is not certain, but it is thought that it was used for "liturgical worship" such as baptisms. Based on the fact that the Christian artwork was large in size, K. S. Painter suggests that the owners of the villa at this time were not only Christians, but also wealthy. Graves A Romano-Celtic temple-mausoleum complex was constructed around 300 AD to hold the bodies of two young people, those of a male and a female, in lead coffins. Although the