A FAMILY has been reunited with a 150-year-old wedding dress after it was lost at a dry cleaners.

Tess Newall, who grew up in Morham, had worn the dress, which belonged to her great-great-grandmother, when she was married to Alfred Newall in June last year.

After the wedding, at Morham Kirk, she took it to be cleaned at a dry cleaners in Edinburgh, only for it to go missing when the business went into adminstration.

Mrs Newall’s father, Patrick Gammell, who is vice lord-lieutenant of East Lothian, said his daughter was “distraught” when news broke that the dress had disappeared.

Tess, who attended The Compass School in Haddington, and studied archaeology and anthropology at the University of Oxford, had posted on social media looking for the dress – made by her great-great-grandmother, Dora Torin, in 1870 – after it had gone missing.

The social media appeal to try to track down the dress went viral and was covered by newspapers not just in Scotland and England but as far as New Zealand and India.

An initial post on Facebook read: “It seems that the dress was taken to be sold so it could be winging its way anywhere.

“Please share this far and wide in case anyone stumbles across it!

“I realise there are far greater issues in the world but it means the world to us. More family memories need to be woven into its threads.”

Then, on Friday morning, she posted: “We received a phone call from the very kind landlord of the property who read about it through this amazing response.

“He checked what was left by the administrators Wylie & Bisset and found a crumpled heap of antique lace on the floor.

“My mum and dad have just been let into the shop and to their amazement and joy it is our dress!”

Now, Tess, who works as a freelance set designer in London, is at last set to be reunited with the dress.

She posted on Facebook: “My family can’t thank you all enough for creating this frenzy which allowed us in before it was too late, and are over the moon to be almost reunited with Dora’s dress.”

Mr Gammell was delighted to confirm that the dress had been found and safely returned, and was now “in a secret location”.

He said that Tess, who previously teamed up with fellow East Lothian native Xa Shaw Stewart to create A Guinea Pig Pride and Prejudice, a guinea pig-inspired version of the classic Jane Austen tale, was now back at work after a busy weekend.

He said: “Tess was distraught to start with, then pretty angry.

“She got going on Facebook after we had been trying quite hard to find it through the proper channels and coming up against brick walls.

“She decided to go on social media, which was a new world to me, and I was astounded by how much interest there was and it went round the world.

“We were all amazed and completely over the moon when we heard it had been found.”