A grandfather of five from St Albans has spoken of his sadness after spending more than three months working on two paintings - only for them to fall out of his van while he was driving.

Bill Bental, of Waverly Road, spent more than three months creating two paintings of several bonfire festivals in Sussex.

But when the 84-year-old was driving his camper van to Artscape in Southdown Road, Harpenden, he realised the leather folder containing the paintings, along with other drawings and photographs, had fallen out of the back of the van.

He said: "I can’t have closed the back door properly. By the time I got a quarter of a mile from home, I realised the back door my van was open and my big folder that had got a whole collection of A3 and the two original paintings had gone.

"It had fallen out.

"We have been going round putting up posters all round the area, but there has not been anything handed in.

"I said to a neighbour once I got home ‘I might have broken my leg, but that would have been less painful, considering I have put so much into it.’"

He was due to have his work mounted at the Harpenden-based art company to protect it after completing the work in watercolour pencils and then acrylic paint.

Mr Bental is due to meet a representative from the bonfire society in Rye on Saturday, April 4, to discuss the paintings, but fears he might not be able to show anything else but photographs of the work.

While watching the festival, the grandfather-of-five takes pictures of the revellers enjoying the proceedings and these photographs then form the basis of the artwork.

He said: "I just think, the more people who know about the paintings and the importance of them to me [the better]. I am 84. I do take these things painfully - it is pretty hard work.

"I have been working on the two of them since Christmas.

"I would hope someone might say 'I have seen them' or we have seen that case."

Six societies put on five separate parades on November 5, which means almost 3,000 can take part in the festivities, while as many as 80,000 people are believed to join the annual celebrations.