Child's hidden letter found after 44 years

A letter written by a 10-year-old girl in the 1980s and hidden in the cavity of the stairs at her home has been found 44 years later.

The house in Hockley, Essex, was undergoing renovation work when a worker found the scrap of paper and passed it to Michelle Harwood, who now lives there.

Filled with curiosity, the 36-year-old charity worker examined it - noting "really neat" handwriting for a child - and posted on her local Facebook community group on Thursday morning to track down the author.

Within an hour, multiple people had found and tagged Rachel Miles, now a 54-year- old teacher in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire. And she responded.

The BBC contacted Miles almost half a century after she wrote the letter.

She explained that time capsules were popular in the 1980s because of the influence of Blue Peter, and recalled writing the letter after her dad found a cavity behind the stairs.

"I just thought it would be quite nice to basically post a letter for the future and I'm obviously quite delighted to see that someone had found it," she said.

Miles said it was "lovely" reliving her Essex childhood and "really nice" to see how many people remembered her, despite her moving out of the county.

"It's nice to hear familiar names that I knew and to be reconnected with the area," she said.

She added it amused her that, out of her whole family, she had only named her cat, Kizzy, who was a "legend of those parts".

Harwood described the moment she saw the letter.

"[Reading] 'to the finder' just immediately gave me goosebumps," she said.

"I couldn't believe that note had been there longer than I've been alive."

The letter is dated 12 August 1982, eight years before Harwood was born.

While the Harwoods have lived at Betts Farm Estate for 11 years, Miles said her family were there when it was just a building site that she and her friends would play on.

Harwood noticed parallels between her own life and that of Miles.

Miles was born in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, near where Harwood's husband, Jonathan, lived as a child.

They also both owned cats while living at the house, which explained why a catflap was already at the back door when the Harwoods arrived.

Harwood said in her social media post that it was "a long shot" and she had no expectations of finding the writer at all, let alone in the same morning.

"I think social media is great for things like that, because so many people are connected," she said

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