EXCLUSIVE: Who buried bones of six dead people in black plastic bags?

HIDDEN: The bones from the Middles Ages were buried in two black bin bags (IG)

The bones of at least six people found buried in mud have been dated back to the Middle Ages, leaving a mystery as to how they ended up there hidden in two black bin bags.

Kent Police launched an investigation in January after they were found at the site of a former vehicle workshop in Whitstable.

Contractors doing drainage work with a digger unearthed the bags which were buried two metres deep.

A Kent Police spokeswoman said: "The bones, which have been analysed by experts, were found to be from around the middle ages. As such Kent Police will no longer be investigating the discovery."

However, it is not known where they came from before being bagged up and hidden.

Archaeological surveys have to be carried out before significant developments take place and if bones such as these were discovered on a site it could prompt the need for further work to determine the scale of the historical site that had been discovered.

MYSTERY: Andrew Richardson said builders not wanting to pay for studies may have concealed them

It is suspected that developers behind a site somewhere may have unearthed the bones and kept quiet to avoid such costs and potential hold ups before burying them there.

Andrew Richardson of Canterbury Archaeological Trust said: "I think it very likely someone doing some building work in the last few years disturbed them somewhere, decided they didn’t want to do the paperwork, and illegally removed them and reburied them on this site in the bags."

It is not clear if it will be investigated further or what will happen to the bones.

Mr Richardson said his trust would take them, but Whitstable Museum may get first refusal or they could be reburied.

He added: "We wouldn’t be able to undertake any further analysis without some funding.

"There is no obvious way to establish more about this without doing some very time consuming work, which I doubt anyone has the resources to do."