Stale news was not the only thing builder David Thorpe found in a 1903 copy of the Watford Observer – inside lay an 82-year-old Marmite sandwich.

The sandwich, made with home-baked bread, had been trapped in the middle of a partition wall for more than 80 years and came to light as David carried out work at a Watford shop. The package was so neatly wrapped that, at first, David thought he had stumbled across some hidden treasure.

“I was taking down a small lath and plaster partition and this package was lodged in between the two layers of plaster. When I saw it wrapped up so neatly I thought it was a bunch of £5 notes. It was only when I unwrapped it I found this medieval sandwich,” said David, of Park Close, Bushey.

 “It didn’t smell at all and that just goes to show what good bread it was in those days,” he added.

David was carrying out renovation work at Hammonds of Watford, the music shop in Lower High Street, when he made the find.

Staff at the shop called in experts from Watford Museum to take a look and see if they would like a tasty exhibit.

“They came over but said it would not be good for them because it had now been exposed to the air and would probably deteriorate. Now we are in a position of not knowing what we want to do with it,” said shop secretary Mrs Joan Taylor. “At the moment it is sitting on my desk. It seems a shame to have to throw it away after all these years.”

Although Mrs Taylor thinks the chunky snack contains Marmite, no one has been able to pinpoint the exact contents.

“We would really have liked to have found out what was in it,” she said.

[From the Watford Observer of May 24, 1985]