THE mystery of a Wellington council house golden key held by the town’s museum has been solved after a tenant stepped forward in response to recent publicity.

The museum has held a key which was presented by developers to local councillors in 1969 to mark completion of the 1,000th council house in the town.

But, nobody knew how it came to end up in the museum, nor which house it belonged to.

Now, Gloria Parkinson has told how a replica of the key was also presented to her and her late husband Tony when they moved into a two-bedroom house in Gay Street, on the Priory estate.

Mrs Parkinson, now aged 88, said she had forgotten all about it and could not remember the last time she even saw the key.

She said: “The first I knew of it was my daughter rang me up and said ‘mum, you are famous, you have gone viral’.

“I did not know anything about it, I do not have a mobile phone and I do not understand this viral stuff.”

Mrs Parkinson, who worked in the town’s Boots pharmacy for 52 years, previously lived in a damp cottage in Rockwell Green and needed a family home as they had a daughter and son Jane and Kevin.

It was Christmas week 1969 when they moved into the property in Gay Street, which they later purchased in the 1980s under the right to buy scheme.

Mrs Parkinson said: “We loved it, we did quite a bit of work improving it and extending it to three bedrooms.”

Mr Parkinson died in 20212 and Mrs Parkinson later moved out of the home, selling it to a woman who as a child also lived in Gay Street and used to play in the house with Jane Parkinson.

She moved first to Cedar Court, and now lives in Lodge Close.

Kevin and Jane now live in Oxford and Northampton, respectively.

Museum chairman Mike Menhenitt said he was delighted when Mrs Parkinson visited the museum this week to end the hunt for the 1,000th council house.

Mr Menhenitt said it had been discovered that the first council houses in Wellington were built in Longforth Road in the 1920s, but the first real estate development was in Priory in the 1960s.

He said among those who worked on the Priory houses as a foreman and carpenter was Peter Stradling, who still lived in Wellington.

The golden key was made by Garrard Ltd, which was the Crown jewellers, and was in a presentation box with an accompanying note to give its authenticity.

Among those present at the presentation ceremony were the then-MP Edward du Cann, the mayor of Wellington’s French twin town Lillebonne, M. Leon Deslandes, who had been invited to officially name the nearby Lillebonne Close development, the Wellington Urban District Council (UDC) housing committee chairman RJ Tredwin, UDC chairman Peter Farrant, and other councillors.

Wellington Silver band played selections of music during the afternoon and the national anthems of Great Britain and France.