A REPLICA Wye Trow built to represent Herefordshire at the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Thames Pageant in 2012 is set to return to Herefordshire after years of absence from the county.

In 2015, the Hereford Bull graced television screens across the nation, featuring on the BBC's Great Antiques Hunt and Wild Britain.

But it disappeared from view after moving to Gloucester Docks, where shipbuilders T. Neilsen and Co discovered that the craft had suffered a fungal attack.

And there were other obstacles which also made keeping the trow in Herefordshire difficult.

"Keeping it on the Wye was proving very difficult as the river rises and falls by up to five metres, and mooring it was unsafe.

"Furthermore there proved to be very limited navigable space for a boat of this size along the Wye," Jeremy Picton-Turbervill, of the Hereford Bull Committee, said.

"The sea cadets had plans for a floating jetty against which it could have been moored, but the expected funding never arrived."

But, after its long absence, the newly refurbished Hereford Bull has now found a new home in the county.

"We wanted to keep it in Herefordshire, and the National Trust have agreed to take it on as an exhibit at the Brockhampton Estate," Mr Picton-Turbervill said.

The installation of the exhibit has been delayed by the coronavirus pandemic, but it is hoped the Trow will be on display in an orchard at the traditionally farmed estate near Bromyard later this year.

The display, designed to illustrate the transportation of goods up and down the river, will allow people to get an up-close look at the Trow, which has been restored to be a more original representation of the traditional barges that once travelled the Wye.