‘Devil’ statue hidden in a church for one thousand years discovered

Chester: It is the devil they didn’t know.

For 1,000 years a tiny Satan has been hiding high up on Chester Cathedral.

Now high-tech has uncovered the little devil.

Drone camera operators filming the building for a history tour found the carving nestled high up in the nave, close to a window.

They have dubbed it The Chester Imp by historians.

A spokesman for the cathedral said they knew a sculpture was there, but footage taken by the flying drones gave them their first close-up of it.

 Legend has it that a medieval priest was overseeing the construction of the cathedral and was startled to see Satan staring at him through one of the windows.

The next morning a stonemason was sent up to carve an image of the devil in chains in an attempt to frighten him from ever returning.

The remote-control drone operators had been given exclusive access to the cathedral and were capturing footage for the city’s new Chester Unlocked history trail when they spotted the pint-sized demon.

They had been commissioned by social enterprise Big Heritage, which is working with business group ‘CH1 ChesterBID’ on the project.

Big Heritage managing director Dean Paton said: “The drone cameras were able to get up close to parts of our beautiful 1,000-year-old cathedral that haven’t been seen since it was built, and that’s incredibly exciting not only for us and the team at the cathedral, but, we hope, to the whole of the city.”

Bizarrely, close-up footage of The Chester Imp taken by drone cameras was mysteriously corrupted when the team came to download it.

“The mystery continues it seems!” added Mr Dean.