Diary reunited with owner after nearly 40 years

Retired police worker Michelle McCue reached out after her father found a pocket sized diary from the 1980s during renovation of her house in Hawkhurst Road, Penwortham.

In the front of the diary it states in blue ink, ‘Brigid Pui Sedgwick St Preston Lancs ’.

After reading the article, 54-year-old Brigid Pill, a primary school cook from Penwortham, was convinced she was the owner, even though she had no recollection of keeping a diary.

Her son Jonathan, 28, said: “Mum lived in Sedgwick Street and her sister lived in Hawkhurst Road, so it all fits.

“But where the lady thought the name was Pui, mums name is Pill - it must have been the way it was written.

“But what’s funny is that she has no recollection of writing the diary, and suspects it might have originally been hers, and then used by her older sister Maureen, like sisters do.

“It makes it more intriguing now to get it back and see just whose diary it is.”

Ms McCue, who has since moved to Alicante, has left the diary with her father Charles.

She said: “I haven’t read the diary, I just looked on the cover page and thought about knocking on doors in Sedgwick Street, but knew it was unlikely she’d still be there.

“It will be really nice that my dad can give it back, because it was him that found it in the ceiling.”