MY NAME is the Earl of Cardigan, and my father is the Marquess of Ailesbury. He is in his 90s, and his memory is not as good as it once was. Some 25 years ago he loaned an important medieval parchment to a man in south-east Wales.

It was called the Seymour Pedigree, and was a vast medieval hand-drawn family tree of the entire Seymour family at that date – from whom we are descended –  and may have been commissioned by (Queen) Jane Seymour.

My father recalls that he loaned it to a man who owned a small castle in South Wales, east of Cardiff, possibly in Gwent.

I once made plans to go and see this parchment when I heard that on that very day the castle’s owner was in the News of the World. The News of the World is gone, so I cannot look back through their back numbers, in order to trace him, even if I knew which year this was.

If any reader of the South Wales Argus remembers a man who owned a small castle in south-east Wales, and who one Sunday became the lead story in the News of the World, and who that man was, that would be enormously useful information in our attempts to track this heirloom down.

Cardigan
The Earl of Cardigan
Savernake Estate
Savernake Forest
Marlborough
Wiltshire 
SN8 3HP