A couple doing up their garden got more than they bargained for when they unearthed a wartime bunker.

Jenny Dale and husband Hardeev discovered the shelter while digging – finding a rusty scooter and some empty bottles in the process.

They had just removed a shed because it contained asbestos and were preparing to level the concrete underneath to install decking.

After days of drilling, the sturdy underground chamber – which would have housed up to 12 people – emerged.

They moved into the semi in Singlewell Road, Gravesend, more than two years ago and, having decorated the inside, have just got round to the outside.

Jenny – mum to Jada, three and Jade, two – is researching the history of their find.

The 36-year-old Bexley Council worker said: "It measures about 6ft by 8ft and was really well built.

"We think the house must have been owned by somebody quite well-off.

"We also found some glass bottles, a Whites' lemonade, a Coca Cola bottle and Teacher's whisky."

She added that since the discovery: "I feel like I'm living in a time warp. It will be something to talk to the children about when they are older."

She believes the house was built around the 1920s or 1930s.

Since putting news of the find on a social media, she has received about 300 replies, some from experts on wartime relics and structures.

The family initially thought it was an Anderson shelter, a structure half-buried in the ground with earth heaped on top as a protection against bomb blasts.

She said: "We have since been told it is an air raid shelter probably owned by somebody who was important in the community or worked for the government."

Jenny is trying to track down who would have lived at the house during wartime.

She plans to keep the scooter as a memento and give it pride of place where the shelter hid for the last seven decades.

She said: "I plan to give it a spray and perhaps decorate it with flowers so we can have a feel for the person it belonged to all those years ago."

Meanwhile Hardeev, 40, is getting to grips with the decking.

They are not the first people to find shelters at their homes.

KentOnline previously reported how structures had been found in Rochester and Ashford, while Gravesend still boasts a Cold War nuclear bunker.

Do you know who may have lived in the property during the war? Let us know by emailing njordan@thekmgroup.co.uk