A FAMILY has been reunited with holiday tapes thought to be lost for more than a decade – after a neighbour posted an appeal on Facebook without realising that one of the family members in them lived just two floors below.
Michael Bewley, originally from Newcastle, had been given the video reels by another man, purely because they had ‘Newcastle’ written on them.
The other man had originally found the films in a skip before keeping hold of them for ten years.
After recently buying equipment which allowed him to digitise reels of video tape, Mr Bewley finally got round to watching the footage and realised it included film of a family from spring 1967.
He then set about tracking those in the reels down by appealing on social media for anyone who recognised them to come forward.
Mr Bewley, a professional photographer who runs MB Infocus, said: ‘I put it [the digital version of the footage] onto the computer and thought, ‘right, I’ll screenshot it and see if I can get a comment back’.
The post was quickly shared dozens of times and a response came back after just 20 minutes.
Captured in the video reels were Michele Brignall and her brothers.
Mrs Brignall recognised her siblings in the screenshots and responded to Mr Bewley’s Facebook post while babysitting for her granddaughter at her son Jason Fox’s house – unaware that the films were being cared for just two floors above.
When she saw the post, Mrs Brignall said she ‘sent Jason a message straight away’.
Mrs Brignall, who appears in the reels as an 18-month-old baby, said that when she first started watching the clip she became ‘quite emotional’.
Mr Fox believes the tapes, which had been labelled with his grandfather’s name, may have been accidentally thrown out when he moved house in 2009.
And there may be more family memories to be uncovered for Mrs Brignall and family members.
Mr Bewley has just collected another box of tapes from the man who kept them for over a decade. He hopes to digitise these too, and bring more memories back to life.
