A picture appears to show a 30-metre creature moving through the water at Blenheim Palace.

A humped creature has been captured on film, swimming and turning beneath the surface of Queen Pool.

The team behind the monumental Blenheim Palace Lake Dredge Project were monitoring the water when they spotted a dark presence underneath.

On returning to site, team members from Blenheim Palace and Land & Water, the wet civil engineering company working on the project, took pictures of a mysterious creature about 50ft from the shore.

"I really don’t know what it was in the water. It was something large... It was propelling itself with something. It wasn’t how a fish would do it," said one of the team.

"It rushed forward and then turned around."

Another said: "It was dark in colour and I saw it for around 20 seconds before it sank back into the water.

"It was difficult to estimate the size but it was definitely large.”

This eerie picture was snapped early in the morning while the surface was still.

The creature has also been seen splashing its tail, breaking the calm water.

The Lake Dredge Project was paused in December due to bad weather but restarted this Spring, with the aim of restoring ‘Britain’s finest view’.

Head of Built Heritage at Blenheim Palace, Kelly Whitton said: “It’s all a complete mystery to us - how long it has been in the pool, the age of the beast and where it came from.

“We’ve consulted an expert from the University of Oxford, who suggested it could be an example of palatium aprilstultus, a very rare creature indeed.”

The groups working in the location have grown fond of the monster, believed to be 30 metres long based on aerial imagery, and have given ‘her’ their own name - Bessie the Blenheim Beast due to its likeness to the Loch Ness monster.

Simon Perry, Operations Support Manager at Land & Water, added: “When we were approached by the team at Blenheim to take on this project, we knew there would be challenges along the way - but the prospect of discovering an underwater creature was not one of them.”

The Queen Pool is part of the ‘Capability’ Brown landscaped parkland created in the early 1760s.

It is not known for how long Bessie has been in the pool, however, it is being considered that she might have moved in when work stopped during the winter break.

 

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This story was written by Miranda Norris, she joined the team in 2021 and covers news across Oxfordshire as well as news from Witney.

Get in touch with her by emailing: Miranda.Norris@newsquest.co.uk. Or find her on Twitter: @Mirandajnorris

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