Over the course of a distinguished career, Petty Officer C.J. Goddard served in the reign of Queen Victoria, Edward VII and George V.

He sailed to China on HMS Dido at the turn of the century and served on HMS Nepean during the First World War.

He had the medals to prove it too. But his descendants, if he has any, might not know about any of it because for most of the last century those medals sat in a dusty old tin in a cellar under a row of houses in Chatham.

When Chatham council set about pulling them down in Dale Street in the late 1960s, PO Goddard’s exploits might have been lost to history, buried beneath the rubble – but for young plumber Fred Chapman.

Employed by the council to plug off the water and gas pipes, young Mr Chapman wandered into the pitch black of the cellar and shone his torch about.

By chance his light struck a glint of brass on a beam just below the ceiling and revealed a tin marked ‘Christmas 1914’.

Inside the tin were some old medals and Mr Chapman realised he had found treasured possessions.

“I took it back to my boss, showed him the medals and he told me he would try to find the owner,” said Mr Chapman.

“After two or three weeks I asked him if he had found out anything? He said ‘no, I don’t think we will’. I asked what I should do and he said ‘keep them’.”

Mr Chapman put the medals away in a trunk for safe keeping, and, to cut a long story short, life and the rest of the 20th century carried on.

“I’m trying to find out if there’s still grandchildren or great grandchildren. If I can get proof they’re related I’ll give them back" - pensioner Fred Chapman

“I forgot about them,” he confesses. “I’ve had three different houses and they’ve been in the loft wherever I’ve moved in a brown case.”

That was until earlier this year, when Mr Chapman, now 70, went up into his loft in Pattens Lane to investigate a leak in the roof, and happened upon the case.

When he sifted through, he found the tin and remembered the medals – and decided it was time he tried to track down any relatives of their original owner.

“I’m trying to find out if there’s still grandchildren or great grandchildren,” said Mr Chapman. “If I can get proof they’re related I’ll give them back.

“There’s no point in me keeping them. If they stay in the loft, it feels a bit of a waste.”

And he added: “I don’t know what they’re worth and I’m not interested. I would never want to sell them.”

If you know anything about PO Goddard or his family, please call the newsroom on 01634 227803 or email medwaymessenger@thekmgroup.co.uk