STAFF at the Wiltshire Record Office have thanked a sharp-eyed local historian for retrieving a copy of the Potterne parish register, stolen from the record office in March.

The register, a copy of the original which covers baptisms and burials for just over 100 years from the time of Oliver Cromwell, and of marriages from the first year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, was completed by a London genealogist in 1945.

It was noticed missing in March but the police were not informed because thefts from library shelves are not unusual and the book was not in itself valuable.

Archivist Steve Hobbs said: "It is a springback folder with a lot of typewritten pages in it, so it is not very valuable to anyone except those who are trying to trace their family history, and to them it's invaluable."

The original is held in the record office strongrooms, so the information was not lost forever.

Then James Turner, a regular user of the record office from Swindon, recently went on a day out to the small Gloucestershire town of Burford.

He said: "Seeing the sign for an antiques fair, I popped in and was looking for anything to do with Wiltshire when I stumbled on this precious find.

"When I saw the item I thought, that looks familiar, and I immediately knew it should not be for sale. It is a one-off copy of the original register and the only one in Wiltshire.

"It was just pure luck that I stumbled across it so it could be returned for the public to use."