A museum boss who found bones feared to have been human has spoken of her shock discovery.
Penny Asquith-Evans, director of the Silk Heritage Trust, made the gruesome find while gardening at Macclesfield Silk Museum on Friday.
After digging up what appeared to be a leg bone Mrs Asquith-Evans then found another bone fragment in the small garden beside the Paradise Mill on Park Lane.
Police were called and raced to the site. The garden area was cordoned off.
Photographs of the bones were sent off to specialists at Dundee University for identification.
But experts at the university’s Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification ruled out fears that the bones came from a human after examining the photographs.
However the mystery remains as to which animal they come from and how they got there.
Mrs Asquith-Evans, pictured above, said the whole event had been ‘unpleasant’.
She said: “I found a bone, which looked like a small femur, when doing some gardening.
“Although we suspected it was animal rather than human, due to the size, we were sufficiently unsure enough to take a photograph and sent it to an expert for confirmation, but as we hadn’t received this when further investigation produced another small fragment of bone, we called the police to make sure.
“I spent most of the day on Friday with police, giving a witness statement, and talking through stages of the investigation.
“Obviously there was concern about the possibility that it might be human.
“We were very relieved to find out that the bones were, indeed, animal.”
Coun Janet Jackson, mayor of Macclesfield, said the discovery were unnerving.
She said: “I was in the offices at the town hall and people were talking about human bones being discovered.
“It was very unnerving.
“All sorts of things start going through your mind.
“It was such a relief to learn it was animal bones instead.
“They must have been quite large for police to need expert confirmation.
“By the sounds of it staff at the museum responded quickly and sensibly in calling the authorities.”
A Cheshire police spokesman said: “The bones have now been removed from the site.
“Images of the bones were sent to a university to establish their findings.”
