Major conservation work carried out at St Michael's Church in Lyndhurst

Alice Liddell was the "real-life" Alice in Wonderland - a character created by Lewis Carroll after she asked him to tell her a story during a boat trip near Oxford in 1862.

Alice married Reginald Hargreaves at Westminster Abbey in 1880 and the couple embarked on a new life together in Lyndhurst.

Now a conservation project at St Michael and All Angels Church has resulted in the creation of a new path which leads to her grave.

A tranquil area created in the churchyard includes ancient headstones which were cleaned and photographed before mortared together to form seats overlooking the ashes burial ground.

The photographs were taken using a special technique which stripped away the years to reveal long-lost inscriptions.

James Brown, community archaeologist at the National Park Authority (NPA) said the headstones, which were recovered from a redundant pathway and a ditch, had provided a wealth of detail about Lyndhurst's past residents.

All the information captured by the project is now available online, enabling history groups and family researchers to access the data.

The churchyard has been designated as a safe walking route to the village school. It also benefits locals and visitors by connecting Church Lane and the main village car park to the Verderers Court and Queen’s House.

Alice's grave is on the south side of the church.

An NPA spokesman said: "Alice Liddell was the little girl who inspired Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.

"Alice was four when the author, whose real name was Charles Dodgson, became a close family friend.

"His fantastic stories were made up to entertain Alice and her sisters on a boat outing and formed the basis for Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, the first draft of the Alice stories, which went on to become one of the most popular children’s books in England."

Alice and her husband lived at Cuffnells, a country mansion which Mr Hargreaves had inherited.

Tragedy struck during the First World War when the couple lost two of their sons, Alan and Leopold. Mr Hargreaves never recovered from the shock of their deaths and died in 1926.

Alice died in 1934. Cuffnells was requisitioned during the Second World War and was demolished in the early 1950s.