A FAMILY have been reunited with a World War One brooch after it was discovered in a Bury charity shop.

Jennifer McDonough recently came across the jewellery while volunteering at the Bury Hospice shop in Ramsbottom town centre.

As the brooch possessed no information other than a picture of a young soldier, Ms McDonough decided to put an appeal on Facebook to identify the man and track down his family.

From there, it was picked up by Adam Carter, from Bury Archives, and, using material from a recent exhibition, he was able to identify the man as Private John Nation, a soldier who died during the war.

He then located the corresponding obituary, which was published in the Bury Times in 1917 and reported the fact that Mr Nation’s cousin Albert Carter was also missing.

As it turned out, there was already an exhibition display on Mr Carter and his family.

On Tuesday, Ms McDonough met up with Mr Carter’s niece Betty Chapman at the archives, beneath Bury Library, to hand over the brooch.

Explaining what had happened, Ms McDonough said: “I tend to sort all the jewellery out in the shop and it was just there.

“I took it home and put it on Facebook last week. Adam saw it and said he would have a look at the archives and he found him.”

Adam Carter, who is of no relation to Albert, added: “Someone said it looked like a World War One brooch, but it had no information on it at all.

“We recently did a World War One project where volunteers extracted soldiers’ images, names and obituaries, as well as poetry and letters from local newspapers around that time.

“That project meant it only took me minutes to look through and find it so quickly.

“All of these archives will eventually go on a website so people will be able to put a solider’s name in it to search for them. There are 3,000 soldiers on there, all of whom had a connection with Bury.”

The brooch is now set to go on display at Bury Archives along with the the rest of the family’s display.

Ms Chapman said: “It’s amazing. When they found it, I welled up.

“It’s very personal. It’s family and you value this stuff more as you get older.”

According to his obituary, Mr Nation joined the war effort on October 28, 1915, as part of the Lancashire Fusiliers. He died on September 9, 2016, aged 22.

Prior to the war, he had lived in School Street, Higher Woodhill and had been employed as a labourer at the nearby Calrows Waste Bleachery.