A Potters Bar, England, woman says workers building an addition on her cottage have discovered 10 skeletons beneath the floor -- and they expect to find more.
Catherine McGuigan said a group of five workers discovered the first of the bones while digging beneath her dining room three weeks ago, The Daily Mail reported Monday.
"The men said they had found what they thought was an old pipe but when they pulled it out of the ground they realized it was bone," she said. "Then they looked down and there in the earth was a skull and the rest of the skeleton."
McGuigan said more skeleton discoveries followed and the current total stands at 10. However, she said she has been told there may be as many as 40 skeletons buried under the home.
Police were initially called to investigate, but the bones were found to be more than 100 years old and research performed at the local library revealed a Quaker burial ground used to exist in the space now occupied by the cottage, McGuigan said.
The unclaimed bones have left McGuigan with another problem -- disposing of them. She said she has been told it could cost more than $60,000 to cremate the bones in a manner that would be satisfactory to Quakers.
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POTTERS BAR, England, April 21 (UPI) --
Catherine McGuigan, a resident in South Mimms, Hertfordshire, UK, found skeletons from over a century ago buried under her dining room.

She had hired builders for an extension for her cottage, where she has lived for eleven years, and at the beginning of April they found human bones in the ground.

Her cottage was built over a burial ground; from 1697 to 1820 the land was owned by the Religious Society of Friends. In the 1600s, members of the society, better known as Quakers, were persecuted for their beliefs and so were not allowed to be buried in consecrated church grounds. Instead burials, which were also sometimes for others not recognised as parishioners - such as homeless people, often took place in the countryside.

The ''Daily Mail'' states in its April article that the Religious Society of Friends have advised McGuigan that she "must cremate" the bodies, however Quakers have written an open letter to the Daily Mail, informing that for Quakers, there is "no specific advice on the disposal of bodies", and that they had never expressed an opinion on how the discovered skeletons should be buried.

The cremation was rumoured to cost up to £32,000 - an £800 quote for cremation of a single body multiplied by 40, however as yet only ten bodies have been discovered.

The builders originally thought the bones were pieces of pipe, and McGuigan has now ordered coffins and is looking to holding a mass cremation or a burial in a nearby field.