How a was
Macabre Mystery Solved
IT TOOK A TEAM OF DEDICATED AMATEUR ARCHAEOLOGISTS LED BY A LOCAL HISTORIAN SLEUTH JUST SIX WEEKS TO UNCOVER THE MYSTERY BEHIND THE HUMAN BONES THAT HAD LAIN BURIED IN THE GARDEN OF HEATHER
ROBINSON’S DARTMOUTH HOME FOR MORE THAN 300 YEARS.
PHOTOGRAPH BY GINNY WARE
ABOVE: Heather Robinson in front of the burial ground in her garden.
ABOVE:The plaque the Robinsons’ had made for the burial ground in their garden.
the unmarked grave was discovered in April of that year after a gardener struck a human skull with his pick. His spooky find did not entirely surprise Heather and her late husband Derek, as the remains of five skeletons had already been exposed by workman when they were building the couple’s home in 1969. the pair had alerted the police and a sample of the bones were examined at the force forensic laboratory in bristol. As they were dated at more than 100 years old the police said the skeletons were of no interest to them and returned the bones to the robinsons, who put them back into the ground – now covered by Heather’s sitting room. when the new bone collection was brought to light sixteen years later Heather decided it was time to try and uncover the story of why these unknown bodies had been buried in slop- ing ground 50ft above the river Dart. Heather said: ‘in the intervening years after building the house, we used it as a holiday house. in the 1980s we moved here permanently and my husband set about design- ing the garden.
F
‘He knew there was a possibility we might dig up more bones and as soon as the gardener told me he had hit a skull i decided we had to stop the terrace work and try and find out more about them.’
ourteen skeletons were eventually unearthed in the grounds of Heather’s house in Castle road during the landscaping of her garden in 1985.
LEFT:The double grave found in the Robinsons’ garden showing ‘Christopher’ in the foreground with ‘Daphne’ behind him.
Heather spoke to Dartmouth historian ray Freeman about the finds while attending her local history class and Mrs Free- man contacted John Allen, the former curator of the exeter- based royal Albert Museum. while the museum’s archaeology department was inter- ested in the find, it was unable to spare the staff, time and money to carry out an expert dig of the site. Undeterred, Mrs Freeman formed a band of local volun- teers to carry out an archaeological excavation. Heather, a former nurse, also took part in the dig and the group was sworn to secrecy while they carried out their archaeological investigation in a bid to deter macabre on- lookers and black-magic followers. Mr Allen, gave the army of diggers his expert advice on how to carry out the excavation and also promised to spend a day at the site. the burial ground consisted of a patch of rectangular ground measuring some 25ft x 11ft which had been covered by two cold frames in the victorian era. by the end of the first day of carefully scraping away the soil at the site, the amateur archaeologists had exhumed the partial skeleton of what they believed was a 6ft tall man. there was no trace of a coffin, but the team did find several rusty iron nails which indicated there had been one. the team named the skeleton Christopher after one of the policemen who had visited the site. Heather said: ‘we gave every one of the skeletons names
‘We gave every one of the skeletons names - one is named after me - because it gave a human side to it somehow and it was a bit of light-heartedness.’
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