A TWO hundred year old mystery surrounds the existence of a Royal coat of arms in a small rural church near Ledbury.

There is a possibility it commemorates a long forgotten Royal visit by King George III.

Professor Basil Jarvis, of the Kempley Tardis project and the Friends of Kempley Churches, is both fascinated and intrigued by the painted board from Georgian times.

The ancient heraldic board has recently been returned to St Mary's Church, Kempley, having been cleaned.

In fact, many local people will not have ever seen the George III "hatchment", because it was taken away for safe storage by English Heritage, around 20 years ago.

Now it is back, but posing more questions than it answers.

Professor Jarvis, who has so far failed to find any reference to the granting of the official royal hatchment in any local archive, now plans to search records in Gloucester to find out why such a huge honour was granted to such a small church in the first place.

He said: "I do think it would have been a great honour for St Mary's Church. Perhaps George III visited, - who knows?"

Professor Jarvis said: "It is good to see it once more in its rightful place.

"We now need to consider how it was that a small rural church should have a royal hatchment."

The likely age of the hatchment, however, is more easy to pin down.

Professor Jarvis has discovered that George III hatchments after 1802 tended to carry the Hanoverian crest, but the Kempley hatchment is an earlier version of the coat of arms of the Georgian monarch.

This means that it probably pre-dates 1802.

George III has gone down in history as "mad King George" because his behaviour became erratic, probably due to the effects of the genetic blood complaint, porphyria.

It was during his reign that Britain lost the American colonies.

George III became so ill after 1810, his son, the future King George IV, had to rule for him, as Regent.

Anyone with information about the Kempley hatchment should email: chairman.fokc@kempleytardis.org.uk