If you thought barn conversions were a relatively recent development for the property-owning classes, you’d be wrong – probably by 16 or 17 centuries.

Archaeologists at the site of a Roman villa complex in the east Midlands have discovered that its wealthy owners converted an agricultural timber barn into a dwelling featuring a bathing suite with a hot steam room, a warm room and a cold plunge pool.

Fresh evidence of the villa owners’ lavish lifestyle comes two years after a family found fragments of ancient pottery on a ramble through farmland in Rutland. Archaeologists from the University of Leicestershire, in partnership with Historic England and Rutland county council, later unearthed a rare mosaic depicting Homer’s Iliad.

The finding – now protected by the government – was described as “the most exciting Roman mosaic discovery in the UK in the last century”.

Rutland has lost its status as the only county in Britain without a McDonald’s restaurant.

At a council meeting last night, the planning and licensing committee voted to approve an application for a 24-hour drive-through restaurant on the outskirts of Oakham.

McDonald’s had said its plans had attracted a “great reception” and would create jobs.

However, not everyone was “lovin’ it”, to use the burger chain’s motto. The rural East Midlands county, England’s smallest, received 55 objections before the decision was granted.

These included a letter from a boy of ten who pointed out how much sugar there was in a milkshake and claimed that “the town will be destroyed”.