A PENSIONER wants to give a married couple their wedding photos – half a century after their big day.

Dorothy Lucas, 87, of Hawkwood Crescent, Chingford, found dozens of snaps in the dark room of her late husband, George, while giving it a spring clean recently.

The wedding photographer, who died ten years ago, had taken pictures of the marriage of Derek Johnson, of Royston Avenue in Chingford, and his bride Margaret Crabb, from Grays, who were married in the 1960s in a Grays parish church.

Despite numerous attempts to find the couple Mrs Lucas’s search proved fruitless, but she hopes readers might be able to help locate the bride and groom.

She thinks the couple may not have been able to afford the pictures at the time but wants to give the photos to them for free.

She said: “I was pleased to find them, they are really very nice pictures. They make me wonder what happened to the people in the photos because they look so happy.”

Mr Johnson, says a note attached to the photographs, was Venture Scout Leader of the 15th Chingford Group, but the scouts today have no idea where he might be or even if he is still alive.

But Mrs Lucas, who helped out in her George’s photography shop in Chingford Mount Road for a living, feels the couple should have the photos if possible because they brought back so many memories of her own happy marriage.

“It made me remember my own wedding,” she said. “We got married in Chingford two years after meeting one evening in a dance hall.

“I was 27 when George asked me to dance and that was that. We ended up pressed together in a telephone box afterwards. He was a wonderful man, we had a lovely time together.

“We took trips up and down the country to take photos and I managed to take some as well.”

George did not just keep wedding photos. Mrs Lucas also found pictures of her aunts working in drapery store Everett’s, in St James Street, Walthamstow, in the 1920s.

“We lived and grew up in Waltham Forest,” said Mrs Lucas. “It was strange seeing these old pictures though, the place has changed so much.”

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