Family reunited after 40 years

AN ISLINGTON woman has been reunited with her long-lost cousin after 40 years – just hours after he appealed to Gazette readers for help in tracing his family. Clive Coward, 57, of Rochester, in Kent, was gobsmacked when his cousin Joyce, 64, of the Eltho

AN ISLINGTON woman has been reunited with her long-lost cousin after 40 years - just hours after he appealed to Gazette readers for help in tracing his family.

Clive Coward, 57, of Rochester, in Kent, was gobsmacked when his cousin Joyce, 64, of the Elthorne Estate, off St John's Way, Archway, phoned him up after decades without contact last Friday.

He had published a plea for help in tracing his estranged family, whose Holloway roots he had traced back 140 years, on last Thursday's Gazette letters' page.

Mr Coward, who decided to try and re-establish contact after his father Ron passed away aged 83 last month, has also been put back in touch with his other cousin Sandra.

She has since moved out of the borough and now lives just 30 miles away from Mr Coward in Ashford, also in Kent.

He said: "I spoke to them both last night, it's fantastic! The Elthorne Estate is not far from where my grandparents lived. I just had a feeling something would happen.

"I've done research into my family history and my great-great grandparents lived in Holloway in the 1870s. They had 14 people living in one house. He may well have read the Gazette himself! I'm really pleased, thank you."

Mr Coward will be reunited in person with his long-lost cousins at a family meal next month.