Construction workers at the Dunvale mining memorial discovered human skeletal remains this morning while excavating a drainage trench approximately twelve metres east of the sealed mine entrance. The remains are believed to pre-date the 1963 disaster by at least a century.

Callum Sayer, the site foreman, halted excavation at 8:40 AM when his crew encountered bone fragments at a depth of approximately one metre. He cleared the immediate area and contacted the Metropolitan Constabulary, who attended within the hour and confirmed that the remains are not recent.

“You learn to recognise the colour,” Sayer said afterwards. “These bones are old. Very old. We stopped digging immediately.”

Dr Maren Huxley, a lecturer in archaeology at Bobington Polytechnic, was called to the site by early afternoon. Her preliminary assessment, conducted over two hours in a steady drizzle, identified the remains as a near-complete adult skeleton, likely male, in a shallow grave oriented roughly east-west.

“The burial context suggests the early to mid-nineteenth century,” Huxley said. “There are no coffin fragments, no grave goods, and no markers. The soil profile is consistent with a depth that pre-dates the mine workings, which began in 1847.”

She added: “This is someone who was buried here before the mine existed. Whether they were a shepherd, a traveller, or something else entirely, we cannot yet say.”

The Constabulary confirmed that no criminal investigation is warranted and released the site to the archaeological assessment. Work on the drainage trench has been suspended, but construction continues on the remainder of the memorial, including Ines Cavallo’s forty-one bronze figures, which are being cast in Port Caravel.

Bess Holloway, the 81-year-old widow of Arthur Holloway who has campaigned since 1968 for the memorial, was informed by telephone this morning. Her response, relayed through her son Michael, was characteristic.

“Let them rest where they fell,” she said. “But let us know their names.”

Huxley expects to complete the excavation within a week and will attempt identification through bone analysis, though she cautioned that records from the pre-mining period in the Greymoor Highlands are sparse.

“The Highlands were not empty before the miners came,” Huxley said. “There were shepherds, charcoal burners, seasonal workers. People lived and died up there. They just didn’t leave many records.”

The memorial, which will honour the forty-one miners killed in the Dunvale disaster of 14 March 1963, is expected to proceed on schedule. Sayer said the drainage trench can be rerouted around the burial site without affecting the memorial’s foundations.

“We came here to remember the dead,” Sayer said. “We found more of them. We’ll do right by all of them.”