POLICE officers were baffled to find an abandoned stuffed buffalo head while out on patrol in Broad Street one Saturday night in May 1973.

There was no clue where it had come from or how is had come to be there.

In the absence of a better plan, officers carried the weighty, and slightly moth-eaten, head of the beast back to the station at St Aldates.

It transpired the head, that of a cape buffalo, had disappeared from the room of a student at St Catherine's College, Adam Smith, following a party.

The beast had been 'shot by my uncle's father, the Duke of Grafton,' the student explained to officers when he phoned up to report it missing.

A relieved Mr Smith and a group of friends swiftly went to the station to pick up the buffalo head (pictured).