A hero soldier previously honoured for bravery played a key role in helping recover ‘priceless’ altar plaques stolen from Napoleon III’s tomb, it has emerged.

The wooden prayer frames, two of three stolen in a 2014 burglary at a Hampshire abbey, were identified and returned to their rightful home – with assistance from a 33-year-old episode of TV show Lovejoy.

Grace Gostelow, a sergeant in the Royal Horse Artillery, came across the two items in a plastic bag in a storage unit on her base after they had been discovered by soldiers on a nearby training area.

Realising her antique dealer father might be able to help, the 37-year-old – currently instructing trainee soldiers at Pirbright Barracks, Surrey – asked her chain of command for permission send the artefacts to Paul Gostelow.

Mr Gostelow, 68, then enlisted the help of a metal detectorist friend for help to identify them.

It was he who recognised the Napoleonic crest after remembering a 1993 episode of the comedy-drama, starring Ian McShane.

Mr Gostelow, speaking from his home in Derbyshire, said: ‘It all happened because of my daughter. She said the frames looked a bit interesting and she asked permission if she could bring them here.

‘They had been found by soldiers digging a shell scrape, where they shelter on open ground during an exercise, on the training area at Pirbright.

‘The frames had been put into a cage with equipment and that’s where Grace found them.’

The prayer frames were last week returned to St Michael’s Abbey, near Farnborough, Hampshire, which houses Napoleon III’s tomb – from where they were stolen 12 years ago.

Sgt Gostelow – then a Lance Bombardier – received the Major General’s Award for Bravery after saving the lives of spectators from a runaway gun carriage pulled by six spooked horses.

The freak accident occurred during a rehearsal in Charlton Park, London, in 2016.

She was left on her own after other riders were unsaddled – managing to steer the gun carriage and horses away from onlookers but broke her neck after hitting a tree.

The soldier returned to the saddle for Queen Elizabeth’s Accession Day Gun Salute in Green Park in February 2019, after lengthy rehabilitation.

Last May she was presented with a silver salver by King Charles at Royal Windsor Horse Show after leading the best turned out gun team.

Mr Gostelow told how the prayer frames were identified by the Napoleonic ball and crown emblem.

He said: ‘It was my friend who identified the emblem after remembering an episode of Lovejoy where he comes across a commode with the Napoleonic crest.’

In the 1993 episode of the BBC comedy-drama, Ian McShane’s roguish antique dealer discovers a commode allegedly owned by Napoleon Bonaparte and tries to flog the dubious item after getting into trouble over his taxes.

Meanwhile, Lovejoy’s friend Tinker Dill attempts to forge the emblem for use on other items.

Mr Gostelow and his friend found an old news article which was still online, from the Anglo-Zulu Times, reporting how the frames had been stolen.

It is not known how they came to have been dumped in the countryside.

After contacting police in Surrey, officers from Hampshire Police came to collect the frames last week and return them to the abbey.

Mr Gostelow, who turned to antiques dealing after 27 years as a policeman, most recently Derbyshire Constabulary’s Physical Training Instructor before retirement in 2003, said: ‘I’m just heartened that, because the frames are of significant interest, they have been returned to their rightful owners and can adorn the walls of the tomb again.’

The married father of two believes the damp conditions the frames had ended up in ‘helped keep them together’ while away from the abbey.

He said he was approached with the frames ‘because of my interest in antiques’, to help identify their origin.

Hampshire Police said that after ‘some investigation with the International Stolen Arts Register confirmed that they were indeed the (stolen) items’.

A force spokesman said: ‘In February 2014 the Crypt of Napoleon Bonaparte III, last Emperor of France, was burgled and three unique, historically important and priceless altar plaques were taken.

‘After 12 years they were thought to have been lost, until a chance call from Mr Gostelow, who said he had two of the stolen plaques.

‘Remarkably, Paul knew them to be from the Napoleonic era due to the ball and crown in the corner of the frame – recognised from an episode of the 1990s’ TV series Lovejoy.

‘Officers travelled to Derbyshire to recover the items, and PC Mark Webb (the force’s heritage crime specialist) was able to return them to St Michael’s Abbey in Farnborough for restoration and return to their place in the crypt.’

Police are still following ‘a number of lines of inquiry’ to locate the missing third plaque.

Napoleon III, the nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, fled in exile to England in 1871 after losing the Franco-Prussian war and being captured by the Germans. He died in 1873 after surgery for bladder stones.

In 1880, his widow, Empress Eugenie, bought a house in Farnborough and built St Michael’s Abbey as a monastery with the Imperial Mausoleum for the remains of her husband and her son, Napoleon, who died in the Zulu War in 1879.

When their son’s body was retrieved from the battlefield, a number of handwritten prayers were found in his wallet which Eugenie had engraved and mounted to form the prayer frames stolen in the burglary.

Brother Aelred Cuthbert of Saint Michael’s Abbey, spoke of the joy shared by the monastery upon hearing of the prayer frames’ recovery.

He told The Daily Telegraph: ‘We had almost forgotten about them.

‘We were all very excited because visitors would often ask, ‘Did you ever hear what happened to the altar cards?’, so it was always a bit of a gut-punch.

‘It was so long ago that we thought we’d never see them again.’