With a human skull in the garden?

[Slippersandacuppa]

Because I've never been in this situation before.

We've been tidying up the garden and have piles of rubble all over the place. One of our rickety old fences borders a graveyard (very old belonging to ancient church) and I'm assuming the skull sort of drifted under our fence and has been near the top of the soil for a while. I hope.

I've googled but can't seem to find much info. I'll be contacting the parish council on Monday but wondered if it warrants a call to 101 (or whatever it is) to register it just in case it's not a graveyard wanderer

Anyone had a similar experience?!

Is the hole posdibly post mortem e.g. previously articulated skull or a particularly vicious bit of couch grass?

My uncle was the priest in a parish where bones regularly washed out of the cemetry. He did a lot of reinternments.

Fascinating thread!

Jeffrey You've given me an idea. Hang on.

Witches That's very cute but I'm not sure I'd like one running around the house!

Picture of the row of spikes at the top of the fence within a metre is where we found YS

*of

I'm multitasking as I'm also far too invested in the fate of poor YS. Will no one think of the children?

My garden also adjoins a churchyard, I'm tempted to spend the day prospecting for skulls!

is the hole n the top of the skull??

i cannot make sense of that picture!

I am now wondering if it was a show skull/skeleton..medial peeps..what are they called?? Educational effort?? And someone wanted rid of it and felt it needed a decent burial.

Why is there no photo of the front?!?! I want to see!!

Sharon Can't believe that three pages back you posted pictures of a trepanation game and no-one else snorted/reacted/posted! Brilliant!

No, to be fair, I wasn't keen either!

Nice, but quite destructive and possibly very smelly. STILL haven't worked out how it got in!

I want to buy that trepanation game. It looks like its quite educational.

I so want to be a dotty elderly Auntie who sends that game to all of her neices and nephews at Christmas! It's brilliant.

Apologies for the hijack. I'm sure your skull is v. nice, OP. I like the view of the churchyard from your garden too.

You might have a lovely early Anglo-Saxon grave if you have animal and human bones buried together! Were there teeth on the scull and were they ground down?

Ask for it to be DNA tested, upload the results to one of the DNA matching websites and look for the nearest relative.

This reminds me that we had a human skull hanging about when I was a child - I have no idea where it came from! I must ask my parents...

(not literally hanging like a macabre set of wind chimes or anything...)

I love how his thread has turned us all into forensics experts overnight!

I think we all want to go dig up OP's garden! I used to live next to a graveyard but never had any interesting bones turn up :( Loved walking to school through it though, graveyards are one of my favourite places to stroll peacefully.

Ouriana That would be lovely. I'll just get the kettle on. The archaeologist who came round said he's pretty certain we're sitting on some interesting finds. He mentioned medieval helmets. Would it help if I emailed you the full picture?

Cherish sorry. I've failed you all. I haven't actually got a picture of the front as it wasn't really much to look at. Bit of eye socket but no teeth. I might have a little look under the fence later to see if there's anything left.

I've been googling dna profiling. If I ever get him back, I'm going to find out who he was.

How about a mn meet up/ garden party/ dig in YS's honour? Bring your spades, we'll provide sandwiches, eggs and lashings of ginger beer. We'll hang bunting from the fence to make it less scary. 🎉

Can I come too? I like graveyards, always picture it like an advanced version of visiting an old people's home. Think they might like people popping in as long as they're kind and polite.

Yes please slippers! Time Team is my all time favourite programme and I'm over invested in this thread. I'm not a million miles from you (probably under an hour) and would travel further than that for a chance to wield a trowel!

Not reading your post or the thread, but answering the question in the title:
What would you do with a human skull in the garden?

..make an attractive if somewhat macabre lantern, maybe with a solar panel on a wire behind it.
...or cover it with glitter mosaic tiles as a charming border ornament.
...use it as the centrepiece of the sunburst on the side of the garage that I've made out of all the other bones..