Woodland grave of doctor found battered to death 'one of best hidden and deepest'

Julie Roberts, a specialist in forensic archaeology and anthropology, told Sheffield Crown Court that of the hundreds of graves she'd excavated during her career, this was one of the best hidden and up to three times deeper than average.

Jurors have already heard that Andrew Hill, who is charged with murdering Dr Shawcross after his wife Julie told him she was leaving him for the married GP, is a telecoms worker who regularly dug holes to lay cables.

It took police search squads six months to find Dr Shawcross's body, concealed by a large tree stump and at the bottom of a slope in the depths of privately owned and locked Loscar Woods, in Rotherham,

Miss Roberts added: "I've encountered them dug that deep when machinery has been used, but not by hand. There'd been quite a concerted effort at concealment.

"It was a very well-dug grave. It was a very good spot to pick.

"It would have been surprising if that spot had been stumbled upon by chance."

Hill, 49, of Walseker Lane, Woodall, denies murder, but admits that a spade and a wheelbarrow found in Loscar Woods close to where the doctor's body was found, belonged to him.

He also admits that, about three-and-a-half hours after Dr Shawcross was bludgeoned to death outside his home in Ashley Grove, Aston, he was with the doctor's burgundy Jaguar at nearby fishing ponds.

The jury previously heard that Dr Shawcross, who worked at Firth Park surgery in Sheffield and also at the endoscopy unit of the Royal Hallamshire Hospital, began an affair with nurse Julie Hill in 2008.

Both Hill and Dr Shawcross's wife Carol Shawcross, also a GP, became aware of the affair and Dr Shawcross left his family home in Riverdale Road, Sheffield, to move into the rented house in Ashley Grove.

On January 23 last year, the night Dr Shawcross was killed, Julie Hill had told her husband she was leaving him for the GP.

It is alleged Hill then drove to Ashley Grove, brutally beat Dr Shawcross to death with a pickaxe handle, used the doctor's Jaguar to take his body to the woodlands and buried it.

The case continues.