CAF owner Linda Cooper today appealed for help after a memorial plaque was found on Chesil Beach.

A customer handed the stone tribute to her at the Blue Anchor Caf at West Bexington after finding it lying on the pebbles nearby.

The six-inch square tablet may have been dumped on the beach or washed up after being thrown into the sea in memory of a drowning victim.

It bears the inscription 'Joan, 1923-1996, remembered' and a cross, but has no surname or other writing upon it.

Now Mrs Cooper has appealed for help to return the plaque to its rightful place.

She said: "I don't know how it came to be on the beach.

"It is a mystery. It may have been manipulated from somewhere or the sea may have washed it in. It was a personalised and private stone.

"Someone took the trouble of doing it and it meant something to them."

A customer handed the plaque in to Mrs Cooper and asked her to try and find out where it was from.

Mrs Cooper wants to hear from the family of Joan, who would have been 73 when she died, or anyone with information about the memorial's rightful place.

It may have been a plaque in a wall, from a bench, a headstone from a grave, memorial stone in the ground or a tribute thrown into the sea

Mrs Cooper said: "It is quite brickish and stone in colour.

"It may have been that the 73-year- old drowned and somebody put the plaque in the sea in her memory."

She added: "It would be good if we can get it back to its rightful place.

"Nothing like this has happened here before.

"I just want this mystery solved."

Call Mrs Cooper on 01308 897810 to help.