The charred remains of parish records dating back hundreds of years, burned when a Norwich church was bombed in the Second World War, have been discovered during a museum's deep clean.
The reminder of the destruction caused when St Bartholomew Church in Norwich was bombed in 1942 were found tucked in a bookcase drawer at the city's Strangers' Hall.
And experts are now considering how to best preserve the documents, which are marriage and christening certificates dating back to the 1700s.
The chance find was made by Bethan Holdridge, assistant curator at Strangers' Hall, during the annual deep clean at the 14th-century museum.
Staff at the Charing Cross museum conduct the clean each year to make sure the collection is not damaged by pests.
Ms Holdridge was looking through the drawer of a bookcase when she made the unusual discovery.
She said: "I love books and I was probably taking a bit longer than I should have while poking around.
"I found an initial book in a folder and wondered what on earth it was. I could see they were parish records, but they were so charred that I was a bit bamboozled as to how they had got that way.
"But the next package I found, when I opened the box it said they were the parish records of St Bartholomew's from 1775 to 1794 and that they had been burned in a fire in 1942.
"As soon as I saw that I knew exactly what that meant. It was an exciting find."
The church of St Bartholomew's, off Heigham Street, was badly damaged during the German Baedecker bombing raids in 1942. Today, the tower is all that remains.
Ms Holdridge said it seemed somebody who had salvaged the records donated them to the museum service at some point and they had ended up in the drawer.
She said: "I have been working with people who have arrived in Norfolk recently from Ukraine and Syria and they are still experiencing war.
"While there are still people for whom the Second World War is within living memory, for most of us it's difficult to comprehend.
"But this brings home to you that people in Norwich were being affected by what was happening. It's part of the story of Norwich."
What next for the charred records?
The papers are now at Norfolk County Council's Norfolk Record Office.
A council spokesman said: "Preserving history and making information accessible to all for generations to come is at the heart of what we do.
"But on top of that, this register is a graphic and poignant record of the impact of war on a community and particularly valuable in providing evidence of the destruction of the Baedeker raids."
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