A mysterious face peers out from amid the flints around the village sign, baffling locals and passers-by on the coast road alike.

Look closely and you'll see it peering out from the second row of cobbles at the base of the sign beside the A149 at Stiffkey, near Wells.

Retired builder John Pearson, now 88, recalls helping to build it in 1975, after members of the village WI, including his 87-year-old wife Thelma, raised the money for a new sign.

"When we were building it, the then chairman of the parish council Philip Schwabe brought it along," he said.

"It was something his wife had dug up in their garden. She had died a few years previously and he brought it up and asked me to put in on there."

Mr Pearson, whose father, grandfather and great-grandfather were all builders in Stiffkey, carried out the work for free.

"That must have took a couple of days," he said. "We put the oak post in at the same time."

As well as working in the building trade, Mr Pearson was a special constable in north Norfolk for 30 years and was made an MBE after he retired in 1994.