A GRAVEYARD which is due to be dug up to make way for a new £4million road could contain up to 3,000 bodies.

Council bosses have been accused of "grossly under-estimating" the number of people buried in St Peter's Cemetery, Blackburn.

And relatives said the situation proved that officials were wrong to press ahead with the scheme without doing their homework - or consulting them.

Blackburn with Darwen Council gave itself the authority to move the graves last October at an executive board meeting - but said it had not contacted relatives because the new road did not yet have planning permission.

The road, which will link with Freckleton Street bridge and the town centre orbital route, is due to be finished next year.

When the route was first announced, council chiefs said up to 200 bodies were buried in the cemetery.

But it has now emerged that there are hundreds of gravestones hidden from view.

The council has now admitted that there is a maximum of 1,000 graves - but a group of historians who have been researching its history say that there are at least 3,000.

Relatives of people buried there have reacted with dismay.

The Lancashire Family History and Heraldry Society has found there are hundreds of graves that have been hidden from view since 1956, when the cemetery was taken over by the council.

The authority flattened most of the stones and turned the graveyard into public park. But it said that most of the smaller stones were covered with soil and grass was planted over the top, so they have been hidden from view.

Tony Foster, who has led the research, said: "A lot of gravestones were flattened, and the graveyard was turned into a lawned area.

"The council covered a large number of gravestones by two or three inches of earth, so under the earth there may be twice as many graves hidden.

"I think they have grossly underestimated the amount of people buried there. I would imagine there were at least 3,000 people, if not more."

St Peter's C of E Church was opened in September 1821, and the first burial took place that year.

Official records show that by the end of 1838 there had been 1,351 bodies buried, and the annual number recorded in the register averaged between 90 and 100.

When Blackburn' s public cemetery opened in the 1850s, all church graveyards were closed for new plots - but people who already had a grave, like family vaults, continued to be buried there.

According to Mr Foster's research, the last burial recorded in St Peter's was in 1946. The church, which was hit by dry rot, was knocked down in 1976.

The society is in the process of transcribing as many of the stones as possible, and will record the data on a CD.

Mr Foster, 62, who was born and raised in Darwen but now lives in Bury, said he thought the road should be re-routed around the graveyard.

And a Darwen woman whose great grandmother Elizabeth Sharratt is buried in a family fault at St Peter's said she was "gobsmacked" at the number of people buried there.

Linda Fuller, of Bog Height Road, Darwen, remembers the fuss that was caused when the family's headstone was taken down in 1956. A notice was placed in the Lancashire Telegraph advertising the council's plans. The family protested, and the stone was put back up.

The 59-year-old said: "I was only a little girl, but I remember there was a real stink about it. Our stone was quite an ornate one, and my mother and auntie both protested."

Coun Alan Cottam, executive member for regeneration, said: "This scheme is at a very early stage. Planning permission and listed building consent to demolish is still required for the road as well as the possible compulsory purchase of some of the other plots of land.

"The church records show that the figure could be as high as 1,000. However, records include everybody recorded on memorials and some may not be buried there. In truth, we will never know until the ground is excavated."