AN axe head which is thought to be 5,000 years old will take up its place in the new Experience Barnsley museum.
The Neolithic implement was discovered when Scout Dike reservoir was built between Penistone and Ingbirchworth in the 1920s.
It was kept at Barnsley Corporation water works until it was taken home by Bob Wadsworth’s dad in the 1970s.
Bob, 69, from Dodworth, said: "My father worked at the water works and ended up with it. He brought it to our house 30 or 40 years ago and gave it to one of my sons.
"Over the years it was used as a doorstop and spent the rest of the time in the back of the garden shed.
"When I heard about the museum wanting artefacts I thought they might want to add this to the display so people could appreciate it."
Joann Fletcher, a research fellow at the University of York and who was brought up in Barnsley, is an archaeological consultant on the collection at Experience Barnsley.
"The axe head is one of many brilliant things in the Barnsley collection," she said. "It’s a fantastic representation of the treasures that are going to be on display and there are some really mind-boggling items.
“It also allows us to date Barnsley’s history back thousands of years. The history of Barnsley only dated back to early medieval times before this but we can now push it back much further than that."
