When Winston Shutt unearthed a few old bones while digging in his garden, he thought little of it at first.

But then, more and more started to appear and the small pile eventually became a huge mound containing hundreds of bones.

What was more, on closer inspection they looked remarkably like the small bones of a human hand.

“I was digging the ground for daffodils and I just found two or three bones. I shovelled them away and then more kept turning up,” he said.

The bones were only 10 inches below the surface and in no particular order – although they were all very similar in shape, condition and size.

Among the find are also a few pieces of pottery and some of the bones have cut marks – as if they have been sliced by something sharp.

Retired Mr Shutt, of Milton Lodge, Marton Road, Gargrave, said he thought straight away that they were human. “When you look at them, you can see the joints – they’re fingers,” he said.

But as to how old they are and why so many of them ended up so close together is something of a mystery.

The bones are the latest fascinating historical find in Gargrave, where just this year a Roman brooch was found in a garden off Eshton Road.

The village boasts the remains of a Roman villa and discoveries have also been made of Saxon and Norman remains.

Mr Shutt believes his bones could have been brought to the site by rats.

“There was a mound nearby with rat holes in it and I wondered whether rats could have brought them here from elsewhere. There could have been an old mausoleum around here,” he said.

Mr Shutt gathered the bones together and put them away in his shed, where they have been for around five years.

But then he read an article in the Craven Herald about the discovery 50 years ago of the remains of around 21 men in a shallow pit close to St Andrew’s Church in Gargrave.

And that prompted him to hand over his own find to the newspaper.

At the 1959 inquest into the bones, which had been found during the building of the new Gargrave vicarage, several different theories emerged.

A Leeds professor, called in to examine the remains at the time, confirmed that they were human, that they represented the remains of at least 21 people and that they were probably the bones of males, aged between 25 and 50.

Without carbon dating, the professor was unable to date the bones, but he believed they were several centuries old.

He favoured the theory that the bones were those of Scottish raiders who were known to have plundered the village in the early 14th century.

So, what is the explanation behind the latest Gargrave bones?

Warriors across the ages have cut the hands off those they have defeated in battle – to keep count of how many they have killed.

The hands may well have then been disposed of separately, away from the other remains of the unfortunate victim.

Or Mr Shutt’s rather more mundane theory about rats may be the explanation. In which case, where did the rats find the bones?

What do you think?