A FLAG that played a part in prolonging the peace after World War One looks set to attract renewed interest as the Armistice centenary approaches.

A Victorian church not far from Beatrix Potter's farm, Hill Top, is the unlikely resting place of this red, white and blue piece of history.

The metre-high Union flag that hangs unassumingly in St Peter's Church, Far Sawrey, was donated by the Rev Charles Cecil Dickson, who was an HM Forces chaplain in the First World War.

The church also has a smaller Union flag which the clergyman carried into many WW1 battles.

In 1956 he gave the flags - stored in the loft of his Sawrey home - to the church for safekeeping, said Susan Barr, of the parochial church council.

"Three relics of the Armistice Day signing remain," Mrs Barr told the Gazette. "Two are kept in the Musée de l'Armée in Paris: they are the pen used to sign the Armistice, saved by a French officer, and an ashtray pocketed as a souvenir by a person present at the signing. The third relic is available for any visitor to see in St Peter's Church, Far Sawrey."

The original Armistice was famously signed in a railway carriage in the forest near Compiègne, France, and became official at 11am on November 11, 1918.

Although the Sawrey flag was not present then, Mrs Barr said it was draped over the table at one of the subsequent signings that prolonged the peace: "They were just as important as the original signing."

Meanwhile, General HQ in France had also borrowed the flag on November 11, 1918, for their Armistice celebrations, as they were not allowed to keep a Union flag in their possession.

Rev Dickson is buried at Far Sawrey churchyard along with his wife, Doris.