Buckingham Palace may have announced his retirement from public life, but nearly 10,000 miles across the seas there is one tiny community that hopes The Duke of Edinburgh will change his mind.

So remote is the village of Younanen that it’s inhabitants have only now received word of Prince Philip’s decision to retire.

The reason it matters is that the villagers on the island of Tanna, in the South Pacific, revere him as the son of a local mountain god who will one day return to them.

News of the Prince’s decision to discontinue further Royal engagements has been greeted with despondency among the locals.

"Prince Philip has said one day he will come and visit us," Jack Malia, the village chief told a Reuters reporter who reached Younanen on Saturday.

Holding one of several photographs of the Prince proudly displayed by the villagers, including one from 1980 in a suit, holding a club they made and sent to him in London, he added: "We still believe that he will come but if he doesn't come, the pictures that I am holding... it means nothing."

Each day the villagers pray to Prince Philip, asking for his blessings on the banana and yam crops that sustain their poor community. They had high hopes of a visit.