East Hampshire

Cousin Ann arrived in best Miss Marple fashion on her bicycle late the other Saturday afternoon, in a state of some excitement.

A trained historian, she has been involved in the official archaeological investigation (‘dig’ as she would say) at a series of ancient burial mounds, or barrows, on a nearby heath.

That week the team had unearthed what is strongly believed to be an intact and complete Early to Middle Bronze Age burial urn - a find now being further investigated at a specialist unit in nearby Winchester.

It will not be the first of such discoveries, of course. But when it happens on your doorstep, and in a place that was until recently part of a golf course, it gives one pause. The urn is thought to be anything between 3,500 and 4,000 years old.