A PERMANENT home is being sought for the 3,000-year-old Bronze Age burial urns discovered in a Milnthorpe field a decade ago.

Archaeologists unearthed the crumbly pottery fragments back in October/November 2005, together with cremated human bones and charcoal from an oak pyre. After detailed study and carbon dating, the finds have been carefully conserved at Durham University ever since.

The discovery of the rare burial site 'virtually doubled' the village's known history, says local historian Cllr Roger Bingham. Now, he and fellow Milnthorpe parish councillors say they want to bring home the 'Milnthorpe relics' and put them on permanent public view.

There is a great deal of enthusiasm for the project, said Cllr Alan Baverstock, vice-chair of Milnthorpe Parish Council. "The old gas works from Milnthorpe was taken over to Beamish [open-air museum in County Durham] to be reassembled at some stage but they never have," said Cllr Baverstock. "There's no suggestion they [the funeral urns] are lost; I'm sure they've got them carefully stacked away with labels on. It's a matter of establishing that it's practicable and then finding a suitable home."

Peter Carne, manager of archaeological services at Durham University, said he would be "absolutely delighted" for the funerary vessels to go on display, and talks are ongoing with Cumbria County Council's archaeology experts.

"The urns are here at the moment and the normal procedure would be to deposit them in Kendal Museum but unfortunately they haven't got room for them," Mr Carne told the Gazette. "Displaying them locally is a really good idea and we'd be delighted to hand them over to somebody."

Meanwhile, Cllr Bingham is trying to find a "possible future guardian" for the relics, such as Dallam School or St Thomas' Church.

He explained that the four jars were excavated a few hundred yards from his Ackenthwaite home during a research dig that he requested prior to a new school entrance being built. Their discovery "virtually doubled the history of Milnthorpe", as the earliest artefacts found previously dated from the Iron Age, around 500BC.

"I'm concerned about their being returned and recorded, and I would like them to be on display," said Cllr Bingham. He would also like the cremated human remains to be "interred reverently".

"They were put in these specially made urns so they were clearly important people and I think they should be treated with some reverence," he said.

"When my father was studying medicine he had a real skeleton; that would be unheard of nowadays. It lived under my parents' bed when he was studying to be an orthopaedic surgeon. What I wish to do really is to inter these remains reverently."