Skeletons in the extension

Catherine McGuigan, 42, faces a £30,000 bill to give 10 skeletons dug up from her garden another resting place.

The gruesome episode began three weeks ago when she found her five builders white as sheets and hugging mugs of tea.

"It was like something out of a horror movie," said Miss McGuigan, who has a son, Cameron, ten, and lived in the cottage for 11 years.

"The men said they had found what they thought was an old pipe but when they pulled it out of the ground they realised it was bone. Then they looked down and there in the earth was a skull and the rest of the skeleton."

Miss McGuigan, who had moved out of the cottage during the building work, called police and within minutes her cottage was cordoned off for a forensic search of the hole beneath her dining room.

To her relief, the remains turned out to be over 100 years old and the police did not need to get involved. But within days of restarting work, another skeleton was found. Since then eight more have been recovered.

"It's been heart-breaking and now I can hardly bear to go to the house. Some skeletons are just a few bones but others have been dug up intact actually still in their coffins."

And it is thought up to 40 more bodies could be buried at the cottage in Potters Bar, Hertfordshire – on the site of Quaker burial ground from the 1700s.

And as no one else will take responsibility for the bodies, their disposal has been left to Miss McGuigan.