DEMOLITION work at the old Okehampton Cottage Hospital site has unearthed a piece of history hidden for the best part of a century.

On Thursday March 29, the team removing the rubble from the old hospital site, opposite Okehampton Medical Centre, unearthed a war memorial stone (below) laid in 1925.

According to its inscription, the stone was laid on May 27 1925 by the Lady Clinton, with the blessing of town mayor G K Blatchford and his wife Mrs Blatchford.

The team carefully removed the stone from the ground using their digger, and managed to save it from being disposed of with the other rubble.

Alison Shelton, practice manager of the medical centre, said: 'The guys carrying out the demolition were just clearing away the rubble on Thursday morning using the digger, and they noticed an odd piece of ground covered in loose stone.

'It says a lot about how skilled they are that they not only saw the stone, but then managed to remove it from the ground without damaging it.

'The stone was found underneath the floor of what was the old maternity unit. We have no idea how it got there, or that it ever even existed. It is a real find.'

During the demolition process, two other memorial stones, one that used to be above the hospital entrance, were saved with the intention of placing them in a memorial garden at the medical centre.

The newly discovered memorial stone is likely to join the other two in the new garden.