When Stephanie Burdon, assistant manager at Alabaré Wilton Emporium, saw MOD police medals in a box of recently donated items, she knew that they were special.

She said: “My husband’s (Ian) ex-MOD police, so I took them home to show him because he’s got those medals as well, and he managed to find Mr. Davies.”

Peter Davies had not seen the medals since 2007 when he moved house. Unbeknownst to him, they were simply misplaced and had been in a box in his attic the whole time. Stephanie found them after Peter donated the box to Alabaré without knowing that it contained his medals.

Ian found Peter through a WhatsApp group of ex-MOD policemen.

Read more: Historic home of Salisbury Odeon up for sale

He said: “We’ve got a little WhatsApp group of some of the other MOD police officers who used to be around this area- we used to sort of work together. I knew it was a police officer, just to see whether it was somebody from around this area, I put it on our little WhatsApp group to see if anybody recognised the name, and one of the guys did.

“Luckily another member of the WhatsApp group had contact with this guy, so he just got in touch with him and put him in touch with me.”

Using Ian’s network, Peter was reunited with his medals just days after Alabaré received them.

Alabaré Wilton Emporium summed up the happy ending to the story on its Facebook page.

It said: “To say he was grateful is an understatement. He truly believed he would never see them again.

“Mr Davies has his grandfather's medals from WW1 and his father's from WW2 he can now display them all together.”

See also: New parliamentary constituencies announced - with big changes for Salisbury