AN ENGINEER from Malvern could pocket a reward worth more than £20,000 for his honesty after handing in four rare Stone Age axeheads he found on a beach while holidaying in France.

Adam MacHale, a 38-year-old telecommunications engineer, discovered the artefacts while looking for shells on Petit Rohu beach, Brittany, last August.

He was holidaying in Saint-Pierre-Quibero with his French girlfriend Sonia Hoba, 34, and his two children.

Now he has been put forward for a prize, which could be as much as €30,000, from the French Ministry of Culture for handing in the neolithic pieces - on display at the Carnac Museum of Prehistory in southern Brittany for the first time this week - as a thank-you for his honesty.

Mr MacHale said: “I thought they were two edges of a clam shell and I was a bit nervous putting my hand down at first in case it snapped shut on me.”

Carnac museum curator Emmanuelle Vigier said: “We were very surprised because we have not had such a discovery in the area of Carnac since the 19th century. At first we thought it was a joke.

“Adam went to the museum and compared what he had found with the archaeological objects we had. He realised the importance of the discovery. He asked to speak to a researcher and then me and we told him it was so important.

“At first it looked like just a stone, but it is a very precious stone.”

She said the beaches in France are owned by the state but not everyone hands in artefacts they find, which might be why so few are on display.

“Thanks to Adam, all the visitors here are pleased to see these objects. If he had kept them, others would not be able to see them.”

She added that the French National Council of Archaeological Research would decide what Mr MacHale would receive as a reward in November. “It may be money or another archaeological object.”

Researchers believe that the jadeite axeheads, made from a rock found in the Italian Alps, were possibly gifts given to Stone Age leaders by people from elsewhere in the world.

Since Mr MacHale’s find, a specialist research team has scoured the shore were the axeheads were discovered and found they were buried 6,500 years ago at the foot of a large rocky outcrop in an area of marshland between the land and the sea.

Archaeologists have also uncovered a collection of 27 blocks of stone and another axe blade near to where the artefacts were found.