Search for family in old photos could lead to Fife

Richard Tisdale, from Shrewsbury, discovered the photos in a local antique shop recently and bought them for £5 in the hope of reuniting them with the family.

The collection of photos shows a family of five’s lives on camping holidays in Cornwall, trips abroad to France, Christmas, at a wedding and as children.

And at least one is identifiable as being taken in Kirkcaldy.

The picture shows a group at what looks like a gathering, possibly for a wedding, in the Memorial Gardens, with the Kirkcaldy Galleries in the background.

Another of the family could have been taken at Dunnikier Estate, while one of the children shows them in Kirkcaldy High School uniforms.

The story has generated lots of interest on the Kirkcaldy and Dysart in Old Pictures Facebook page, with at least one viewer certain she knows the family concerned.

Mr Tisdale, a journalist with an avid interest in tracing living descendants of people in historic stories, is now appealing for anyone who might know the family to contact him so the photographs can be reunited.

The snap that stood out to him was of two children in a barrel with a girl leaning on the side. Noted on the back of the photograph was the message “To Mummy and Daddy with lots of love Lorna”.

Mr Tisdale said: “My personal interest is history and I love digging in old newspaper archives and tracing family members of people in the stories to share their history.

“Recently I’ve made a hobby of looking in antique shops for old photos and tracing the families of where they have come from.

“A friend of mine spotted the photos in an antique shop and contacted me to say that I had to come down and see them, so I did and it was a wad of about 200 family photos that spanned over decades wrapped in an elastic band.”

As he dug further into the photos the names of Lorna’s presumed siblings, Ewan and Andrew, along with Mummy and Daddy were noted on the backs of them.

He added: “There wasn’t a lot to go on, on the back of one of the photos is where I got the names, there was the boy wearing the Scotland shirt, the names are quite Scottish.

“An old colleague of mine who is a former police officer was looking at the photos and noticed the one of the woman lying by the car and said the old style registration plate was from Scotland.

“I posted some of the pictures on social media and there was one of the three kids in school uniform. Someone pointed out that the badge had a picture of a three-spired cathedral on it and there is only one of them in Scotland in Edinburgh.”

Mr Tisdale is now appealing for anyone who may know the trio, or Lorna, Ewan or Andrew themselves to step forward so he can reunite them with their precious family photos.

He said: “It’s so sad that this wad of amazing family photos stretching for decades has been lost and forgotten about.

“It’s such a shame that they have ended up in essentially a junk shop and may never be returned, the family might not even know they exist.”