MYSTERY surrounds a hoard of family photographs discovered in a garden shed in Blackbird Leys and the Oxford Mail needs you to help identify them.

James Hillis, of Moorbank, Blackbird Leys, had been safeguarding the albums after his neighbour, Karen Cole, found them in her shed and wanted to throw them out.

Being a self-confessed ‘Womble’, Mr Hillis picked them out of her bin and started leafing through them to discover a family’s history stretching back to 1945.

Hundreds of images have been carefully placed in albums, most of which appear to have been taken from the 1970s and 1980s.

Last night the 55-year-old said: “I just couldn’t see the photos being thrown away. There is a great big bag of them.

“Karen, my neighbour, had them by the bin. I love old photos. I always collect the ones in the Oxford Mail’s Memory Lane column every week “These photos were all dry, they are in very good condition.

“I had a look at them and there were some photos of children in 1986 at weddings when they are bridesmaids and there is a picture of a wedding which looks like it could be the Holy Family Church in Blackbird Leys.

“They tell a story and the owner or a relative needs to have them. Photos can’t be replaced.”

The images, some of which are loose or in envelopes, show a family at parties and celebrations, weddings, on holiday, and often with friends smoking and drinking at bars and pubs in the 1970s.

One envelope is addressed to an ‘Anne Meares’ and there are other references to ‘Anne and Frank’ in several old birthday and Christmas cards, included in the hoard.

One black-and-white picture is dated August 2, 1945, showing a 16-year-old girl called Pam Dwyer.

The names ‘Ryan’ and ‘Kristin and Brooke’ are written on the back of some photos of young children. There is also reference to the Currill family and an Oxford Mail newspaper cutting, showing Donna Currill as a pupil at Cardinal Newman Middle School in Cricket Road, Oxford.

No-one in the block of city council-owned flats in Moorbank knows who they belong to and the current resident at flat 68 does not know who previously lived there.

The Oxford Mail now has the photographs and last night father-of-two Mr Hillis appealed to anyone with information about who they belong to to get in touch with the newspaper.

He said: “If you know who they belong to, then call the paper. It would be a shame to let them go to waste.”

Do you know Anne Meares or who these photos belong to? Call Emily Allen on 01865 425423.