Thornbury couple's wedding album discovered in charity bin

The album, which was anonymously handed into the officer of the Gazette’s sister-paper, the Bourne Daily Echo, was discovered in a charity bin by a member of the public.

It also included a newspaper cutting revealing the couple’s names as Major Eric Kenneth Judd and Olive Joan Kelson.

Following the publication of the Daily Echo’s article, Craig Judd, who works at Parkstone Grammar School in Dorset and who shares the same 17th century relatives as Eric Kenneth Judd, was made aware of the album’s existence.

The couple were married in the Somerset village of Churchill on June 18, 1946 according to a clipping in the album while a photo shows their first house in Thornbury in 1952.

Joan Judd, as was her married name, founded the charity International Cat Care in 1958 and worked to improve feline medical research, with her husband, Major Eric Kenneth Judd, a professional soldier.

According to records in Tytherington, Joan Judd, the last surviving member of the couple, passed away in 2013 at the age of 98, having had no children, and so the Daily Echo issues an appeal to help track down members of the family.

Craig Judd is a part of the same Judd family which had been “prolific” in the village of Winterslow, a few miles east of Salisbury.

Craig and Eric Kenneth Judd share the same seven-times grandparents – yeoman farmer Henry Judd and Susanna Gibbins who were both born in the middle of the 1600s.

Another relative, Ben Whelan, a great nephew of Major Judd who has been sent the album, said: “I received a message on ancestry.com asking me if I’d seen the article in the Bournemouth Echo as they knew I had links to Major Judd.

“I looked at the photograph and saw my grandfather, John, on the left and Major Judd, who was my great uncle.

“I’m not sure who the album belongs to. Joan passed away around five years ago. I’m not aware of any immediate family members who are alive now.

“Eric and Joan didn’t have children.”