Can anyone solve the mystery of a battered old trunk bearing the Chronicle’s address at 13 Nevill Street which somehow found its way into an attic in Caversham in Berkshire?

Clare Biddiss posed the question in an email to our offices, after tracking down the original source of the trunk via Google.

It appears to have a strong connection with a dressmaker once based at this address called Mademoiselle Ardin whose name cropped up in recent ghost-hunting activities in the building.

Clare explained that in 1996 her partner Rob found the trunk in a loft when moving into a new home in Caversham Heights, Reading with his first wife.

While it had survived several house moves since then it had been gathering dust in the garage and, when Rob and Clare decided recently to have a major clear out the trunk was destined for the tip.

“Before Rob loaded it into the car last night, however, I had second thoughts and posted some photos on a local Facebook forum (Caversham Gossip Girls), asking whether it might be worth anything,” said Clare.

“There was lots of interest, mainly telling me to renovate it and sell it, sadly something I neither have the time nor the skill to do!

“However, one member of the group, via Google, traced the trunk back to the building where your newspaper now is.

“I am wondering whether we may be able to reunite the trunk with a descendant?”

Since that initial email the tale of the trunk has apparently been generating a lot of interest in Caversham and Clare has even been contacted by BBC Radio Berkshire for an interview!

“It was quite strange because, as we were about to take the trunk to the tip, I was overcome with a feeling that it mustn’t go,” she said.

“We discovered after further research that Mademoiselle Cecile Marie Ardin was a Belgian refugee from WW1 who lived at 13 Nevill Street as a dressmaker with her assistant.

“What was a bit spooky was that a member of the Facebook group then discovered that you’d run an article in July about that assistant being a resident ghost!

“Someone then did some research about the trunk’s recipient, Harold Price. We think the address on the label reads: ‘Harold Price, Ormside(?), Springfield Road, Abergavenny’. “From census data, he was an ironmonger’s apprentice, born c.1890 and we think his middle name was Vernon.

“It’s just so amazing what you can find out from the tiniest piece of information!

“I have had lots of people asking if it might be possible to trace the descendants of either Mlle Ardin or Harold Price in order to unite them with the trunk. That would be such a lovely outcome!”

If you think you can take Clare’s investigations a step further please contact the Chronicle office.