A GOLDEN key has sparked a hunt by Wellington Museum volunteers to find the owner or tenant of a council house in the town whose front door it fits.

But, unlike Willy Wonka’s famous golden tickets, there are no prizes for the winners.

The key was presented in May, 1969, by developer John Laing Construction Ltd to the former Wellington Urban District Council (UDC) on completion of the town’s 1,000th council house.

Lately, it has been on display in a glass cabinet in the museum, but nobody knew how it came to be in the museum’s ownership.

Volunteers have been researching the key’s history but were unable to find any official record of the key presentation or which council house was number 1,000.

The mystery golden key in Wellington Museum.
The mystery golden key in Wellington Museum. (Tindle News)

They did, however, discover that the first council homes to be built in Wellington were in 1924 in Longforth Road and Foxmoor Road, and there were certainly more than a thousand properties by the 1980s.

They also uncovered a UDC tenants’ handbook from 1958-59 setting out the terms of living in council accommodation.

Museum chairman Mike Menhenitt said: “We would dearly love to find out where the 1,000th council house is and who lives in it now.

“Given it was built in the late 1960s, it is quite possible that the original tenant is still there, or, maybe, their children or grandchildren, who knows.

“We have done everything we can to find where it is and drawn a blank with each of our inquiries.

“There seem to be no written records of it at all, or of the developer presentation to the council, not even in the Wellington Weekly at the time.”

Anybody who can help to identify the 1,000th Wellington council property should email [email protected] marking it ‘for the attention of Mike Menhenitt’.