When King Charles III sits upon the Coronation Chair on Saturday, slotted just below the seat will be the Stone of Destiny – aka the Stone of Scone.

It is an ancient symbol of Scotland’s monarchy dating back what is believed to be more than 2,000 years. And, since being taken by Edward I’s forces following an English invasion of Scotland in 1296, has been used in the coronation of every monarch since.

Yet what few will know is that the stone spent several cold nights hidden in a field in Kent in 1950 – crudely hidden under a pile of litter and straw. Nor the remarkable circumstances around both how it got there and how it was subsequently recovered.

It is a story in which fact is almost stranger than fiction.

Four students, fuelled by nationalistic ideals, breaking into Westminister Abbey, pinching the monument, narrowly evading capture, taking an unexpected detour into the county and then attempting to avoid road blocks to get the stone north of the border.

For context, the stone was a powerful and emotive topic for the Scottish – who resented its theft and had, for centuries, called for its return.

Young Ian Hamilton, 25, at the time, was studying at the University of Glasgow and an active member of the Scottish Covenant Association – a group calling for a devolved Scottish assembly.

It was he who decided the act of any Scot should be to retrieve the stone.

After recruiting a friend, Bill Craig, to help him in his mission, Hamilton travelled down to London to visit Westminster Abbey and scope out how he would carry out his daring theft.

The 1950 incident was far from the first plot to recover the stone from Scotland. In fact as Hamilton planned the raid, he was able to get a sense of the size and, most importantly, weight of the stone by seeing a replica carved in the 1930s for an aborted plot to switch it with the original.

Arriving in the capital by train in mid-November, he toured the abbey, identified exactly how the stone could be removed from the Coronation Chair and the security which surrounded it. At night he walked the perimeter of the abbey to see if and when guards or police patrolled.

To his surprise, albeit in an era before terrorism, security was lax and his mission helped, no doubt, by the absence of any CCTV cameras to alert police to his suspicious behaviour.

“I did not know then,” Hamilton would later write in a book, Stone of Destiny, explaining his exploits, “that what guarded Westminster was not guns, or security cameras or patrolling policemen, but the mystique of the British Empire.”

After gathering a small team of other students to assist him – Kay Mathieson, Gavin Vernon and Alan Stuart – and bankrolled by Scottish nationalists Bertie Gray (a founding member of the National Party of Scotland, which would morph into the SNP) and John MacCormick, the four headed to London.

Original planning had seen them plot to drive the stone immediately after the theft to Dartmoor and hide it there amid fears roads to Scotland would be blocked in a bid to intercept the stone.

Arriving just before Christmas, an initial effort for Hamilton to sneak into the abbey just before it closed on the day before Christmas Eve was rumbled when he was caught by a night watchman. After claiming he was a tourist who had found themselves locked in, he was shown the door.

Fearing the mission was over before it had really started, the group decided to spend late Christmas Eve checking the access points into the abbey – and after jemming open two outer doors found themselves inside just after 4am on Christmas Day.

Finding the Coronation Chair, they forced open the protective holding and started to free the stone.

To their surprise, the stone had been broken and was in two chunks.

What they had discovered – and had been unknown up until that point – was that the stone had been damaged in 1914 as part of the sufragette bombing campaign. A bomb packed with nuts and bolts had been detonated near the chair and while no-one was seriously injured, the stone was left cracked.

Given the full weight was more than 200kg, it made carrying the two sections considerably easier.

But they had a hurdle to leap first. After Hamilton had got one chunk into a waiting car driven by Kay, a police officer approached and questioned them. Pretending to be holidaying lovers they persuaded the PC they were just enjoying a late night and he let them go.

However, the bigger chunk was still by the abbey door with the two other students. Forced to make Kay drive her chunk of the stone away, Hamilton returned on foot only to find the stone but not his pals.

He loaded it into another waiting car and headed off – by sheer luck spotting his friends walking near the Old Kent Road. However, the weight of the stone meant he could only take one of them in the car.

They headed into south London in pursuit of somewhere to hide the stone. As Christmas Day dawned for many, they hid it in overgrowth. In Hamilton’s book he describes it as ‘somewhere in Kent’ – by the description it sounds more like somewhere in the former Kent boroughs of Bromley or Bexley. But it would o deeper into the county.

As news broke of the theft of the Stone of Destiny later on Christmas Day, road blocks were thrown up on border roads as police realised where the stone was most likely headed.

The students returned and recovered the stone before opting to abandon their Dartmoor plans. Instead they pushed into Kent admitting their only knowledge of the county being that “hops were grown there”.

Eventually they reached Rochester and, two-and-a-half miles outside it, they found an empty field which offered them the perfect hiding place. Hamilton described seeing the outline of aircraft hangers and a line of trees.

Dragging the larger part of the stone they disguised it with some rubbish and left it there – safe in the knowledge it would blend in with the countryside and be the last place police would look.

“We dragged it under the fence,” wrote Hamilton, “and halfway down the slope. I hollowed a recess in the earthy mould. We lifted the stone bodily into it and covered it first with earth then leaf mould and straw.”

They added some paper on top for good measure.

“We were certain we’d done a good job,” he said. “We got back in the car and drove on to Rochester.”

We were certain we’d done a good job

Remarkably, they then drove all the way back to Scotland.

So one of the most famous stones in the world sat, gathering moss, in a Kent field somewhere near Rochester for more than five days. While around the country, the nation was transfixed with how such an historic monument could have stolen from such a high profile place – and on Christmas Day of all days.

Unsurprisingly, it dominated the news headlines while the police launched one of the biggest manhunts in British history.

Hamilton – joined by some other friends – then drove the 24 hours, through snow, to retrieve the stone.

The only problem was that a group of travellers had, in the meantime, set up home in the very field the stone was hidden. The blood in the students’ veins ran cold.

Parking their car down the road, they walked up to the field where the traveller family were sat huddled around an open fire.

By some clever sweet talking, they managed to persuade the travellers they were, in their own way, pursuing a lifestyle of freedom – but that they needed to retrieve something from the field that was important to them.

Remarkably, they were given the nod to proceed.

“The stone was exactly as we had left it,” Hamilton recalled. “The litter on top of it was frozen stiff and came off in one piece like a lid. It had protected the stone and the frost had hardly touched it.

“When the gypsies saw the weight we were carrying, two of the men rushed over to offer us assistance.”

Getting the stone back into the car presented more difficulties in terms of disguising it. They achieved it by ripping out a car seat and riding the journey back to Scotland sat on the stone itself.

The stone’s brief – and somewhat inglorious – stint in the county was over.

By the time they got back to Scotland, the police were still no closer to finding the stone.

As months passed, eventually, the net started to close in.

Arrested, the four pals agreed to return the stone.

They had got a stonemason to repair the two broken parts – which had been reunited – and left it in the ruins of the Abbey of Arbroath where it was collected on April 11, 1951.

Despite vocal criticism, it was swiftly taken back across the border and back to London.

The four were not charged and became national heroes for their role in returning the stone to Scotland.

Ian Hamilton would go onto enjoy a successful career as, ironically, a lawyer and remained active politically – standing for election as an SNP candidate. He died in October of last year aged 97.

The Stone of Destiny itself continued to be a bone of contention for the Scots – until, eventually, Queen Elizabeth II agreed it should return to its homeland with the condition it be allowed to return for coronations.

It left Edinburgh Castle – where it is now housed – under tight security last week ahead of its use at Westminister Abbey on Saturday.

And so when you see King Charles III sit in the Coronation Chair, atop of the stone, remember those strange few days when this most historic of monuments spent time hidden beneath litter and straw in a field in Kent.