Gruesome discovery made at cottage
A family in Potters Bar could be facing a bill for £40,000 after a gruesome discovery was made at their home.
When work began on a new extension at Catherine McGuigan's house, builders accidentally stumbled across a burial ground under the dining room.
At least eight skeletons have been uncovered from what was a Quaker resting place from the 1700s, and its thought there could be many more.
Miss McGuigan, who had moved out of the cottage while the work was taking place, called the police who immediately cordoned off the house for a forensic search.
"It was like something out of a horror movie," said Miss McGuigan, who has a son, Cameron, ten, and has lived in the cottage for 11 years.
But officers decided not to take the matter further after the remains turned out to be over 100 years old.
Within days of restarting the work, more skeletons was found. It is thought up to 40 more bodies could be buried at the cottage.
Miss McGuigan will now have to arrange the disposal of the skeletons as no one else will take responsibility for the remains.
"I am staggered that the local council wrote to me saying whilst I did not need a licence to exhume the bodies - because it is not a registered burial site - they still expected me to "show respect" for the dead," she said.
Despite an undertaker quoting her a fee of £800 per body, Miss McGuigan says she still plans to carry on with her £150,000 extension.
The cottage was reportedly built over an old Quaker meeting house. It is thought that because the worshippers were non-conformists they were not allowed to bury their dead in church graveyards.
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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.