AMAZING as it sounds, the hand of a man who broke bread with Jesus at the Last Supper is believed by many to rest in Marlow's St Peter's Church. DAVID LANGTON takes a look at the full story.

It all begins beside the sea of Galilee where two brothers named James and John were busy mending their fishing nets in around 30AD.

An unknown carpenter from Nazareth named Jesus approached the two men and asked them to join him in his mission to save mankind and take on the sins of the world.

The pair, sons of Zebedee, agreed and became the third and fourth of Jesus' 12 apostles.

Both were witness to some key events in Jesus' life, including the transfiguration, and both wrote gospels, although St James' never made it in to the New Testament.

Following Jesus' crucifixion, St James continued preaching the word of the Lord but met a grisly death as a martyr at the hands of Herod Agrippa, son of King Herod, in 44AD.

A leap of faith and a thousand years later, St James' hand ended up in the possession of Empress Matilda, Henry I's daughter.

The Empress gave the hand to her father and he in turn passed it on to Reading Abbey where it was kept and treated as a genuine relic of St James.

And there it would have stayed had it not been for the Reformation under Henry VIII in the 16th century. Among the victims of this violent movement was Reading Abbey burnt to the ground and all its monks murdered.

Anticipating a visit from Henry's henchmen the monks hid the cherished relic to save it from destruction. The hand was so well hidden that it didn't resurface until 1786 when the foundations for Reading Jail were being built at the east end of the old abbey.

For the next 100 years the hand was passed from pillar to post going from one private collector to another until it fell into the hands of soap magnate Charles Murray who lived at the original Danesfield House where the hotel now stands.

Mr Murray, who was a man of great influence and had been the local MP, converted to Catholicism following a visit to Rome and set about building Marlow's St Peter's Church in 1846.

Mr Murray, who had always kept the hand in his private chapel, gave it to St Peter's in 1896.

With many holes in the story it is impossible to say now if the hand is really that of a saint. Canon Antony Griffiths of St Peter's is not convinced.

He said: "The authority of this is far from sure. On balance it is unlikely to be genuine although you can't absolutely rule it out.

"Put it this way. It is a left hand and the hand that was kept at Reading Abbey in the Middle Ages was certainly regarded as genuine. I would say it is likely that the hand found by the builders was the same hand hidden by the monks. Whether the whole thing dates back to the apostles is unlikely."

Some years ago a surgeon examined the hand, which is now small and withered, more like wood than human tissue, and confirmed that it was the left hand of a male.

Canon Griffiths added: "It had not been mummified with special treatments. It sort of mummified itself which is really quite strange."

Canon Griffiths said it is not clear when the hand was cut from St James, if it ever was, but the location of St James's body is well known and one of the most popular pilgrimage sites in the world.

Following his execution in Israel St James' followers are believed to have carried his body down to the coast and put it into a stone boat, which was carried by angels and the wind beyond the Pillars of Hercules, later named the Straits of Gibraltar.

The boat landed near Finisterre at Padrn on the Atlantic coast of northern Spain. He was buried a little way inland, and the site of his tomb was forgotten for some 800 years.

Early in the 9th century a hermit named Pelayo was supposedly led by a vision to the spot. The tomb was rediscovered, and the relics authenticated as those of St James by the local bishop.

The body was hidden during the 16th century when Sir Francis Drake was pillaging Spain. Once Sir Francis returned home it was taken to a shrine at a cathedral in north-west Spain called Santiago de Compostela. The authorities have since refused to take a look inside to check on the hand.

Canon Griffiths said: "It has been claimed there is a hand missing."

The little church in St Peter's Street is an unofficial part of the pilgrimage to Compostela. Canon Griffiths said: "Some people still do pop in on their way. I tell them what I know and they can take it or leave it.

"If it was proved genuine we would have to treat it with a little more respect. It would be reasonable to put it in a place of honour rather than locked up in a safe.

"However I don't think it would make a very big difference to us if it was proved true. Nowadays the idea of visiting a relic is not so popular as it was. People are a little bit more cynical these days."