“IT is astonishing that even the dead cannot lie in peace,” said the prosecutor at Durham Assizes during a notorious case in early 1955. He was speaking at the sentencing of a 16-year-old pit lad and a 21-year-old miner, both from Chilton Buildings, who pleaded guilty to the removal of a corpse from a grave in a burial ground.

They were also charged with causing £8 of damage to walnut in a mausoleum.

The Northern Echo’s report of the case, describing it as “astonishing and unusual”, has been sent in by Mrs E Elliott of Woodham, following our recent stories on Windlestone Hall, near Rushyford.

On September 18, 1954, the miners broke in to the mausoleum at the hall, “where most of the ancestors of Mr Anthony Eden, the Foreign Secretary, are buried” – months later, Mr Eden became Prime Minister.

Initial reports suggested that the culprits were lead thieves, who had been steadily stripping the 1830s stately home which had recently come into the possession of Durham County Council.

“My late husband, James Elliott, was a police officer at Chilton and Windlestone between 1953 and 1957 and dealt with this case,” wrote Mrs Elliott. “He said the young men told him they had recently seen a film about dead bodies and people buried in crypts and mausoleums so they thought they’d have a try at Windlestone.”

They smashed through an oak door into the ground floor of the mausoleum which Mr Eden’s grandfather, Sir William, had built in 1868. They picked on the coffin of Robert, Sir William’s nine-year-old son, who had died in 1856.

The outer walnut shell fell apart easily, revealing an inner lead casing.

The prosecutor said: “They dug at it and prised at it until they dented it and, I think, to their horror, this most perfectly preserved body emerged.”

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In shock, they ran away. The damage was discovered by three schoolboys playing in the grounds the following day, causing the 16-year-old to become so distressed that his parents took him to the police.

The judge agreed that the lad – who would not be named today which is why we are not identifying the pair – had been led on by his elder co-accused, and so he was placed on probation for three years. Sentencing on the 21-year-old was postponed, although we believe he ended up in prison.

The prosecutor said that the last time that a court in Durham had heard a similar charge was in 1788, when a man opened a coffin in the ground and stole the body for purposes of dissection.