THE man seeking to piece together the story about the tragedy that hit his mother’s family more than 75 years ago is delighted with the response from readers who got in touch to share their memories.

Andrew Neather, from London, wrote to The Brecon and Radnor Express asking for information about Anne Lawrence, a seven-year-old girl from Brecon who drowned in the river Tarrell on May 4 1940.

Anne was the older sister of Elisabeth, Mr Neather’s mother. Mr Neather said that his mother had told him her family rarely spoke about the tragedy while she was growing up and now she was older she wanted to find out more about what had happened.

Mr Neather says he has been contacted by Grania Joinson the widow of Bryan Joinson, who was the young boy who was with Anne on that fateful afternoon when the little girl slipped into the river while trying to pick flowers.

Mr Neather said: "It was interesting to talk to Mrs Joinson. She did not have a lot of information, her late husband having mentioned it only in passing a couple of times. But I feel like I’m slowly building up a better picture."

Also in touch with The Brecon and Radnor Express was 88-year-old Brecon funeral director Doug Prosser who says that he still has the bier that was used to carry little Anne's coffin at her funeral.

"I knew Anne’s mother and father. We used to go to school every morning by their house. I was only 12 years old when she died and she was seven," Mr Prosser said.

"The bier is hundreds of years old. It was used until we got modernised in the 1960’s. I was one of the first to change to a silver one that I made myself.

"We would take the bier up to the hospital to collect a body and then take it back to the house and then carry the coffin on it. We would walk with it like a hearse, only we had to pull it. This one was going in the 1930s and 1940s."

Mr Prosser, who started working as an undertaker in 1942, said he did not know Anne personally although he knows the location of her grave, which he stumbled across more than 20 years after the tragedy.

He added: "No I don’t know much about Anne's death. All I know is that she’s buried in St David’s churchyard in Llanfaes.

"I was tidying up graves and saw hers and thought I better tidy up this little grave, so I tidied it up in the 1960s."

"There were salmon runs in the Tarrell and she got stuck in one of those."

Mr Neather is so encouraged by the response he says he is hoping to visit Brecon later this month and hopes to see Anne’s grave for the first time as well as meet Mr Prosser.

He said: "I already know where the grave is (though it’s unmarked, and I obviously haven’t seen it) as Avril Bailey, the churchwarden at St David’s Llanfaes, located it for me."