GALLERY A CHURCH was sealed off by police after a worker discovered bones beneath a shed in a former graveyard.

Russell Claydon

A CHURCH was sealed off by police after a worker discovered bones beneath a shed in a former graveyard.

The grisly discovery occurred at St Mary's at Stoke church in Ipswich at about 1.35pm yesterday.

Roy Alexander, a member of the congregation, had been taking down a shed in the churchyard when he spotted the first bone.

He reported the incident to the police, who taped off the area while they dug up more bones before taking them away to conduct enquiries to determine their origin.

Maureen Springle arrived at the church to open it up for the public just as the police had arrived.

She said: “The church is always open on a Thursday afternoon and we got here to see a police car and thought what is going on?

“They took the bones away in a bag. Our records show there has not been anybody buried here since 1855 when the churchyard officially closed. We do not think it is anything mysterious though.”

The oldest gravestone in the churchyard is thought to date back to the 1600s.

A Suffolk police spokeswoman said the bones had been seized by scene of crime investigators and would now be sent on for dating and identification.