On a chilly Sunday afternoon in January the 34-year-old was removing an old tree stump to make way for some new decking at the side of his Dalewood home when he discovered a stash of guns that had been buried for the best part of a century.

The three rifles and three revolvers he exhumed were taken away by the police for examination, but Mark was finally able to reveal details of his historic find when the antique firearms were returned to him last week.

"I was digging round the stump of an old oak tree and I must have been down about two feet when I came across these plastic Richardsons fertiliser bags. I pulled them out and looked inside and found the rifles and pistols. I couldn't believe it," he told the Times.

Mark, who runs a security company based in Carryduff, contacted the police to report his discovery and the quiet cul-de-sac was soon a hive of activity with dozens of police and Army Technical Officers on the scene.

"I pulled the intact rifle out of the fertiliser bag and was out in the street with it showing the neighbours and joking that I was doing neighbourhood watch. A few minutes later it was total bedlam. The street was cordoned off and there were police everywhere."

Officers returned to Mark's house the following day with specialist equipment looking for more buried firearms, but nothing else was uncovered.

Police testing confirmed that the weapons, none of which were in working order, date back to the late 1800s and early 1900s and may have been buried for more than 90 years.

Their analysis revealed that Mark had uncovered a .38 Smith and Wesson Model 2 revolver, two 7mm Pinfire Belgian revolvers, a Mauser .318 bolt action rifle and a Vetterli Vitali bolt action rifle - some extensively damaged and all badly corroded. Also among the stash was a complete .303 Martini Enfield rifle, but the PSNI have refused to return it as it is still legally considered to be a potentially dangerous firearm.

Underlining the historical significance of the find is the presence of an Ulster Volunteer Force crest on the wooden butt of the Mauser, suggesting that the rifles were almost certainly among the estimated 20,000 firearms shipped into Ulster in April 1914 on board the 'Clyde Valley' as unionists stepped up their resistance to Home Rule.

Thousands of German Mauser and Italian Vetterli rifles were smuggled into Larne during the UVF's gun running operation and distributed to volunteers across the country.

"There were thousands of these guns shipped over on the Clyde Valley. Not all of them had the UVF stamp, but they are regularly discovered on farms and in outhouses all over the country," explained gunsmith Derek Beattie.

The fact that the firearms were in relatively modern fertiliser bags suggests that they were dug up some time in the 1970s or 80s when the area was still farmland, re-wrapped and re-buried.

Owing to their badly corroded state, the guns are unlikely to be of any great monetary value. However, Mark says that he is just delighted to have dug up a little bit of history.