A big-hearted plumber made it his "mission" to reunite a family with the memories they lost more than a year ago after his son dug up precious photos of them while building a sandcastle on the beach.

Wesley Holdaway, a father-of-two from Banstead, was on holiday with his family on West Wettering beach, in Sussex, during the Easter holidays, when his seven-year-old son Jake found a digital camera memory card while playing on the beach.

Mr Holdaway discovered 270 photos and videos of a mystery family, including a newborn baby girl being held by her grandmother, stored on the card when he plugged into his computer and "made it his mission to track down the family".

The 35-year-old said: "I’ve got children myself.  I would’ve been gutted to have lost all those memories of the kids growing up. 

"So I thought ‘I have got to find them, I would want to be found’."

When scrolling through the pictures, Mr Holdaway zoomed in on the baby’s birth tag and discovered the mother's name was Michelle Palmer.

Unable to find her on Facebook, he went back to the memory card and spotted her son wearing a school jumper. 

Obtaining the school's name from its badge, Mr Holdaway telephoned the school, where the secretary was, by chance, Miss Palmer’s next-door neighbour. 

After then calling Miss Palmer, 32, who lives in Brighton, Mr Holdaway posted the memory card to her by recorded delivery – after ensuring all the photos and videos were backed up on his computer just in case.

Mr Holdaway said: "They were touched that I had gone to all this trouble and didn’t think they’d ever get the photos back.

"The pictures were of great sentimental value to the family and it was a really lovely feeling to know they got back to their owners."

One particularly poignant memory was a video of Miss Palmer’s daughter with her grandmother, who subsequently ended her own life in a Dignitas clinic in Switzerland.

Miss Palmer said: "Anyone else would probably have thrown the card away or kept it for themselves.

"All my pregnancy pictures were on there of my daughter, Amber, when she was born in hospital and my little boy.

"It was really lovely to find a video and pictures of my nan on there as well, because she’s no longer with us.

"I had no idea where I’d lost it so I didn’t really try looking for it."