A MUSEUM in New Zealand is hoping to reunite old photos from Tavistock with its rightful owners after receiving an unusual donation.

The Warkworth and District Museum, based in the northern part of the Auckland region, was recently handed a shopping bag full of old photographs by the town’s local hospice shop. The photos had been found in various items of furniture that had been donated.

The hospice shop was moving premises and during the clean up, the photos were found and donated to the museum.

Volunteer Alan Britton helps run the museum. He said: ‘The majority of them are family and individual portraits and all appear to be from England. We have one lot of photographs in particular that we think have some connection with Tavistock, as a newspaper cutting from an American newspaper carried a photograph of a Miss Ivy Beale of “Pen Tavy”, Tavistock, Devon, England.

‘This cutting was included with a mounted portrait of a lady who looks similar so we are assuming that they may be one and the same. The portrait is not named but the cardboard folder it is mounted on carries the name of the photographer, S W Wadge, 12 Brook Street Tavistock.

‘We do not believe that they are all one collection but the largest percentage are, they seem to date around the early 1900s. The pictures with photographers named are from Plymouth, Portsmouth and a number of London based studios as well as the one from Tavistock.’

The cutting from the American newspaper featuring Miss Ivy Beale is thought to be from the early 1900s but has no official dates and details a summer visit to America in the caption.

A second photo donated at the same time is thought to be a second photo of Ivy, with a third thought to be of her home in Devon, possibly the elusive ‘Pen Tavy’.

If you could potentially have any connection to Ivy Beale or may have a link to the name Hudson, you can contact the museum through their Facebook page, www.facebook.com/warkworthanddistrictmuseum