How a stolen 1957 wedding album found its way home

Anticipating she could be the bride, Fawcett found Bullivant in the online 1939 register, a record of the population of England and Wales at the start of World War Two, and discovered she was born in 1937 and lived with her parents in Sheffield.

She then tracked her down in the marriage index records, which showed she had married Peter Gosney in 1958 – a year after the date of the wedding captured in the photo album.

This meant they were not the bride and groom after all, but two of the wedding witnesses.

Research into Bullivant’s parents provided another breakthrough. Their marriage records showed they had wed at Wadsley Parish Church in Sheffield.

“It’s a place I’d never heard of so when I looked at the faded list I couldn’t make it out, but as soon as I got that information I could see it,” she explained.

“It’s like those paint books you’d get as a kid when you put water over the page and the image would appear. It all of a sudden made sense.”