‘Dear Anne’: Woman tries to reunite 1943 letter with family

A woman is hoping to reunite a family with a letter, believed to have been written in 1943, after it was found inside a book in Co Wicklow earlier this month.

Aran McMahon, from Dublin had taken home a number of old history books from the recycling centre in Bray last week when she came across the letter.

“I was cleaning them down and putting them on my shelf at home and then one of them, called ‘Winchester’, dropped and the letter fell out,” Ms McMahon told The Irish Times.

“It’s so full of facts for two tiny pieces of paper. This lady Joan, who is staying at Grove Place, Nursling, Hampshire in England, is writing to another lady, Anne, who I presume is her sister.

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“There’s no year on the letter but Joan told Anne that she’s sending this book about Winchester and the letter was in the book and inside the book in pencil there’s 8/43 which I presume is August 1943.”

Ms McMahon believes Anne was living in Ireland when she received the letter as Joan writes about sending books “overseas” and “worrying whether or not there will be much more post before Christmas.

“She mentions she is sending books for three other children and asks Anne whose character would suit which book best. For that reason I presumed they weren’t her children, they were Anne’s.”

The letter also appears to mention the Allied invasion of Italy in September 1943.

“She talks about the war saying ‘isn’t the news wonderful about the Italians, next will be Germany, the Russians are giving them what they needed, a good kick in the pants’,” Ms McMahon added.

Ms McMahon said she has been researching Grove Place in recent days and it was a manor house set on a large country estate near Winchester at the time. She said Joan may have been a milk maid as she mentions cows, a hen house and learning how to ride horses within the letter.

“She’s talking about getting a jumper knitted by this lady called Mop and she’s doing it in stripes to match her brown suit. There is just loads of little details like that in it, what life was like at the time,” Ms McMahon added.

“It’s a fascinating letter and I would love for the family to get it and out of my own curiosity hear what her story was, what was she doing there.”