"IT broke my heart" was how Olive Ayres described her feelings when she was told she had to modify her husband's headstone before it could be erected at his grave in the churchyard at Headley's All Saints' Church.

Mrs Ayres, who lives in Oakhanger, wanted the very

best for her husband Kenny, after he died from cancer in June 2012, and commissioned a top stonemason to

create a headstone from grey granite with a verse

she wrote herself on it in gold lettering. On top is a

carved woodpecker but originally it was coloured

"like the one that used to come into our garden which

Ken loved to see".

To protect it from the weather and to keep the shine on the granite, a laminated coating covered the stone, which, she said, cost a few thousand pounds.

But in March last year, Mrs Ayres said she was told

by rural dene The Reverend Anne Gell that she would have to remove the shine and the colour from the woodpecker, and there were to be no vases of flowers other than the one moulded into the base of the gravestone.

For full story, see this week's Bordon Herald.