Family reunited with ashes found in skip at Guestwick, near Fakenham

Alex Dunmore from Fakenham Skips with the urn in his office. Picture: ITV Anglia (Image: Archant)

The firm launched an appeal to trace the family of Gwendoline Harding.

All they initially had to go on was a card inside her urn, which said she was cremated at Watford, Herts, in 1996.

But after the story was picked up by local media, her granddaughter Sylvia Bradshaw contacted the company and collected the ashes today.

As she was handed the urn by Alex Dunmore from the skip company Miss Bradshaw, 37, from Fakenham, said: 'I'm still in shock, I'm still shaking. I'm going to give them to my aunty because she's her eldest daughter and she'd love to have them back.

'Massive thanks to Alex and the skip company for what they've done. They've just been human beings really.'

Miss Bradshaw said she had no idea how the ashes ended up in the skip, which had been placed outside a house which was being renovated in Guestwick. She said she thought they had been buried in the garden of her late father Allan Bradshaw's home in Little Snoring.

'I'm at a complete loss how it's happened,' she said. 'I thought she was laid to rest quite some time ago. I'm really emotional. I'm just in shock.'

She added she was on her way to Norwich in a taxi when she heard a story about Gwendoline's remains on the radio.

Alex Dunmore, the skip firm's office manager, said: 'We tried to hit the ground running and find the family. That was the first thing on my mind.

'Our goal was just to find the family and that's what we've done thankfully.

'We put a skip on a site for a customer and it can sit there for a couple of weeks. Anyone passing could have put the urn in there.'