By ALISON SMITH-SQUIRE

Last updated at 08:20 21 April 2008

When Catherine McGuigan began digging an extension in her cottage, she thought she had budgeted for every contingency.

But she could not have prepared for what would emerge after workmen found ten skeletons buried under her dining room.

And now Miss McGuigan, 42, faces a £30,000 bill to give them another resting place.

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Respect: Burial laws mean the skulls and skeletons have to be disposed of with respect

The gruesome episode began three weeks ago when she found her five builders white as sheets and hugging mugs of tea.

"It was like something out of a horror movie," said Miss McGuigan, who has a son, Cameron, ten, and lived in the cottage for 11 years.

"The men said they had found what they thought was an old pipe but when they pulled it out of the ground they realised it was bone.

Shocked: Catherine McGuigan outside her home

"Then they looked down and there in the earth was a skull and the rest of the skeleton."

Miss McGuigan, who had moved out of the cottage during the building work, called police and within minutes her cottage was cordoned off for a forensic search of the hole beneath her dining room.

To her relief, the remains turned out to be over 100 years old and the police did not need to get involved.

But within days of restarting work, another skeleton was found. Since then eight more have been recovered.

"It's been heart-breaking and now I can hardly bear to go to the house.

"Some skeletons are just a few bones but others have been dug up intact actually still in their coffins."

And it is thought up to 40 more bodies could be buried at the cottage in Potters Bar, Hertfordshire – on the site of Quaker burial ground from the 1700s.

And as no one else will take responsibility for the bodies, their disposal has been left to Miss McGuigan.

"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 explained.

"And the Quakers have also advised I must cremate them.

"It appears I could simply throw the remains away but I'm concerned there could be legal repercussions I don't know about.

"Anyway, my conscience means I couldn't live with myself in the cottage if I did that."

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Coffins: The home is a burial site for a Quaker community in the 1700s

The Ministry of Justice, the Government body that has responsibility for burial law and practice, told her it was an offence to "offer indignities to the remains of the dead" and warned of health and safety rules.

Miss McGuigan has now ordered coffins from an undertaker and is looking into arrangements for a mass cremation or a burial in a nearby field.

"The undertaker has quoted me £800 per body," she says.

"When it was just a couple of bodies this was fine. But now I am very concerned that if, as expected, I find 40 bodies, I could be facing a bill of some £32,000."

However the IT specialist plans to carry on with her £150,000 extension, which includes a gym and cinema.

"It's been a very happy home and I've done too much work to stop now," she says.

Research at a local library has revealed the cottage was built over an old Quaker meeting house.

Because the worshippers were non-conformists they were not allowed to bury their dead in church graveyards, so they used the garden instead.

And while the discovery of the burial ground might put the faint-hearted off her cottage, Miss McGuigan says her son has no such qualms.

"I feared Cameron would no longer want to live here," she said.

"But thankfully he thinks finding skeletons in our dining room is "cool" and quite exciting!"