A CURIOUS find has been uncovered by a volunteer gardener at the edges of the town's historic army base.

The Victorian memorial plaque was unearthed by Trevor Thomas in the grounds of the Brock Keep in Oxford Road, at the base of community art group OpenHand OpenSpace.

Revealed during a routine tidy up of the centre's gardens the volunteer was surprised to find his shovel hit something hard as he was digging in the flower beds.

Dusting down the two broken stone fragments he realised he had stumbled on what appears to be a memorial plaque to two lost children.

Only around one third of the whole piece remains but it is dated at 1839 under the family name of Ford.

Ingrid Jensen, chair of OpenHand OpenSpace, said: "We suspect it's probably a tablet that would have been in a church or inside somewhere rather than part of a gravestone.

"Trevor is a volunteer gardener for us here and he believes it was around two or three feet deep where he found it.

"It was probably left by someone who wasn't expecting it to be dug up again."

After doing some local research the current theory with staff is that the plaque may have originally come from Trinity Congregational Church, which was sited at the corner of Sidmouth Street and Queens Road until its demolition in 1979.

Although it is not clear how it ended up at the other side of town it is thought it may have been dumped along with other waste before the homes in August End were built.

The piece will be kept at OHOS for the time being and who believes they may know more about how the plaque got there can get in touch on news@readingchronicle.co.uk