IT is now one of Hereford's busiest nightspots, but back in 2002 workers made a grisly discovery beneath the floor of the city's soon-to-be Wetherspoon pub.

Workers excavating on the site of the former Kwik Save supermarket in Commercial Road were deeply spooked to find they had been working just above scores of buried human bodies, the Hereford Times reported in 2002.

The find came after foundation work began at the former shop ahead of its transformation into Wetherspoon's pub, The King's Fee.

The site incorporates ground that was a Baptist graveyard until the 1880s, with some 41 burials found beneath the building.

In February, workers from contractors Silverdell said human remains had already been unearthed.

"I'm not scared of what's there. A body's a body, if it's dead it's not going to hurt me," said Silverdell's Craig Hinton, "Some of the other blokes are spooked though."

They say that while working on a Sunday a freakish sequence of breakdowns involving their digger, dumper and compressor happened as they got closer to the concrete slab that caps the burial area.

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Archaeologist in charge of the site, Huw Sherlock, of Archenfield Archaeology said some bodies were removed in the 1980s prior to the construction of the supermarket.

"We may find bits of bones left over from then. On the other hand we might find a whole load of well-preserved burials," he said at the time.

By July that year, all bones had been lifted from the site.

"Very little care had been taken to respect the burials when the supermarket was built in the 1980s and human bones were found scattered throughout back-filled trenches from that time," said Mr Sherlock.

In one grave, the body of a girl in her teens was found with a thick coil of hair still attached to her skull, held in place by a pin.

Some of the graves which were identified and researched include the blind minister, the Rev. John James Waite, and Typhena Gamage. Both the mother and sister of AW Gamage, of the department store in Holborn, were buried in the cemetery.

The bones were taken to Birmingham University for signs of diet and disease before re-committal in Hereford by a Baptist Minister.