THE search is on to reunite three elderly ladies with their former selves ...as viewed by the camera lens! For three photographs from the 'forties have been forwarded from America, featuring the feminine trio whose identities are given as follows:

Elsie Swift of Crow Lane West, Newton-le-Willows, Margaret Topping of St Helens, and Nora Chadwick of Meade Grove, Longsight, Manchester.

The intriguing quest is outlined for us by Richard Attenborough (no, not the veteran movie legend of Gandhi and Jurassic Park fame!). Richard is a senior teacher at Newton Community High, who, over the past year, has developed a web site for the school and for the district in general.

It's as a result of this that the pictures have popped up from the USA, and they represent just one example of the effectiveness of the web site which, Richard reports, has had more than 9,000 'hits' from around the world.

Following responses from former students of both the old Newton Grammar School and Selwyn Jones High, Richard added a letters page. He regularly receives e-mails from places including Canada, America, Australia and new Zealand. Some find the site by simply doing a search on 'Newton-le-Willows'.

Which brings him to the recent e-mail from the USA, forwarded by the intriguingly named James Admire who found the three pictures in question among his father's photo collection. They presumably date from the time he spent at Burtonwood airbase between 1943 and 1945.

James is keen to forward these pictures to the ladies featured or to their families, if they can be traced. He believes the women must have worked at Burtonwood, where his dad could have met them, thus ending up with their pictures.

ANYONE wishing to claim the photos can ring Richard on 01925-229770.