THE diggers have moved in and archaeologists are on site as work begins on Blackburn’s long-awaited £4million Freckleton Street Link Road.

The construction of the new highway will finally provide the £12million Wainwright Bridge - dubbed the ‘Bridge to Nowhere’ - with a destination.

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The work of the historical experts will finally solve the riddle of how many bodies are buried in the the former St Peter’s Church graveyard along the line of the link road.

Blackburn with Darwen Liberal Democrat leader David Foster believes thousands of human remains may need to be exhumed.

His concerns have been backed by a study by Oxford Archaeology North, which revealed that many more people are buried in and around the graveyard than originally thought.

The council has admitted nobody knows for sure how many bodies there are, but it had been working on an estimate of 200 sets of remains being disturbed since the project began nine years ago.

The first of the three phases of work started last week and will take six weeks. It includes: l Site clearance, tidying, stockpiling or removing debris; l An investigation to establish if utility services remain in the land; l Crushing and recycling of concrete and masonry on site for re-use in the road construction; and l The removal and disposal of unacceptable or contaminated material which cannot be re-used.

This phase also involves the excavation along the line of the road down to the level required for the highway foundations on two areas of land between King Street and St Peter’s Street.

Contractors are setting up their site compound to commence the first layer of excavation between King Street and Chapel Street.

Archaeologists are on site but working along the line of the road first.

In May they will move on to the St Peter’s burial grounds.

Borough regeneration boss Maureen Bateson said: “The completion of the orbital route is one of our outstanding transport priorities and once completed, it will help reduce congestion in the town centre.””