A PREVIOUSLY undiscovered letter relating to the Kindertransport has been found in a house in Manningtree.

Doreen Parsons, aged 76, discovered the letter, written on March 10, 1939, in a study at Lawford Place in 1963 after the death of her husband Newman but only ever told her family.

Now she wants to find out more information about the letter, which invites German children who were saved from Nazi persecution, to live at her father-in-law, William Parsons, house.

“When I first found it in 1963 we didn’t know much about the Kindertransport,” said Mrs Parsons, who discovered it after her husband, Newman Parsons, death.

“It was stuck in a file of documents concerning Lawford Place and I have wanted to find out about it for years.

“I thought about asking for help when they were celebrating 60 years of Kindertransport but I never did. It just seems appropriate now to come out about it.”

The letter is written from a William Turner to an E J Brentnall asking him to consider homing German boys at Lawford Place for the duration of their stay in England.

But the mansion, which burned down in 1999, never housed any of the boys.

“It was a hospital during the war,” said Mrs Parsons. “There’s no reply and I just want to find out who the men mentioned in the letter are and why the house was never used.”

More than 10,000 Jewish children were brought to Britain in 1938 and 1939 to escape Nazi persecution.

The Winton Train, a re-enactment of the Czech Kindertransport that saved 669 children, arrived in Harwich on September 4.

The public are able to catch a glimpse of the letter for the first time at this weekend’s Guild Hall Kindertransport exhibition in Harwich.