Old Bones

We used to have a hedge at the bottom of our garden – one of those messy old hedges with lots of gaps. But, getting a bit tired of regular garden invasions by the local livestock, we decided to remove it and put in something more substantial.

It was then that the children found the bones...

My first thought was that we’d found the remains of someone’s pet dog – and my husband was worried that they might be human!! But, having convinced him that they were definitely animal, the kids put them in a box and proudly marched them up to the local museum for identification.

We got them back at the weekend, along with the archaeologists report, and it looks like neither of us was right.

The bones belong mainly to young cattle with a few rabbit bones as well. Some have been cut or sawn suggesting that they were killed for human consumption. They are also likely to be well over a hundred years old – dating to the times before organised refuse collection, when people buried their waste in pits. The suggestion is that these bones are the remains of the meals of workers who were building the nearby railway in the 1850’s.

So there you go – our very own archaeological dig! I wonder what the kids will find next – a stash of gold coins would be nice!