Army of online sleuths solve military marriage mystery

John Powell of Oswestry had been trying to identify the photo which had come his way, telling us: "It was in a box of pictures that I found but with nothing to say where or when or who. The church is, I think, in Llanymynech and I guess that the picture was taken in the 1940s and the groom was doing his National Service.

"It would be interesting to hear if anyone recognises the happy couple after this period of time."

Alas, neither we nor John had any feedback after we published the photo a little while ago,

But then Kenny Woolley, who is based in America, spotted the mystery on the internet and it just so happens that he likes tackling photographic mysteries and geolocation problems for fun.

He did a trawl of churches in Llanymynech and across Shropshire, without coming up with a match.

"I presented the photo mystery to an OSINT (Open Source Intelligence) group on Twitter," said Kenny.

"They run daily quizzes with geolocating mysteries – photos, maps, and so on – and someone came up with a location. The solution seems to be the correct place and there are some similarities if you look at the shape of some of the stones in a comparison to the old photo. It is St Peter's Church, Bishop's Waltham, near Southampton, and I am certain it is the correct church."

Credit for finding the church seems to go to Thomas Smid from the Netherlands, who spent four or five hours searching.

Also spending hours trying to crack the case was Gordon Farrer, a lecturer in journalism in Australia.

Gordon said: "The mystery photo was posted on Twitter into a community of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) sleuths. They – we – are an array of security specialists, computer boffins, journalists and fact-checkers who specialise in tracking down odd bits of info online, researching and investigating, verifying social media content (or proving it to be fake), debunking disinformation and so on.

"I'm an ex journo of many many years, now a lecturer in journalism who specialises in researching and teaching fact-checking and verification skills. I'm sort of a part of that online community.

"On Twitter there's an account called @quiztime run by a group of OSINT professionals, mainly Dutch and Germans. These people have phenomenal skills and can be odd, brilliant types.

"As a way to promote OSINT and to give newbies a chance to develop or practise their skills the group posts an OSINT challenge each day, usually a geolocation challenge, that is, identifying where a photo was taken. Yesterday's challenge was the photo that went with your story."

In the wedding picture there is what appears to be a carved owl within the doorway, which has disappeared since, as have the notice boards, while the carved faces either side of the door have been restored – a modern stone gives the restoration date for the doorway as 1999.

Of course the big loose end is that we still don't know who the wedding couple are.

After hearing of the identification of the church John Powell says: "I had received the packet from the widow of a local keen photographer. She has also died so I have no means of finding out more."

It is possible that the "local connection" might be through the bride or groom coming from Shropshire or the borderlands.

But unless a Star reader with a long memory recognises them, that is yet another big research task with no guarantee of success.