WITH good timing, a York hen has laid one of the biggest eggs ever seen in Britain – just as Easter approaches.

The monster egg, which is the size of an orange, was produced by one of the hens owned by York couple Patsy and Stan Thackway.

Mrs Thackway said Stan could hardly believe it when he found the egg in a field at Dunnington, where the couple keep about 60 hens.

Mrs Thackway, of Millfield Avenue, off Hull Road, said the egg weighed 194 grammes – or 6.78 ozs – and it measured 8.5 inches in circumference.

She said she thought the egg had been laid by one of her Black Maran hens which is called Mollie.

“We had found what we had thought was a really big egg the previous day,” she said.

“But when Stan came back on Sunday, he said: ‘If you thought that egg was big, you should see the one I have got’. It was huge.

“It’s ironic that this has happened at Easter.”

Mrs Thackway said she intended to keep the egg and planned to take it down to Tang Hall Working Men’s Club on Friday and show it to pensioners to whom she regularly sold her eggs.

A spokeswoman for Guinness World Records said it only monitored records globally and the current world record for the heaviest egg reported to have been laid by a hen, is one of 454g – or 16oz – with a double yolk and double shell, which was laid by a White Leghorn at Vineland, New Jersey, USA, on February 25, 1956.