Holy bronze plaque found in a communal storage cupboard four years after mysterious disappearance
A set of peculiar circumstances worthy of the finest of shaggy dog stories has saved an historic bronze plaque.Four years ago a thief unscrewed then prized-off the memorial from the lych gate of the Auld Kirk of Ayr.It was feared the plaque, celebrating the church’s 300th anniversary, had been melted for scrap.At the time the Ayrshire Post wrote of the desecration, with police labelling it “an utterly despicable act.”But it has now turned up in a communal storage cupboard in the close of flats across the river in Elba Street.It was discovered within bubblewrap and a Matalan bag by John Thomson, who had the sad task of clearing out the house after the death of his mother June, aged 85.By divine intervention Auld Kirk minister David Gemmell