A pensioner is delighted after being reunited with a jewellery box stolen from her home.

A 77-year-old woman had just got home from visiting her husband in hospital on Thursday, January 30, at 7.30pm, when she discovered the front door had been blocked on the inside and the back patio door smashed open.

The burglars had made off with her jewellery box, containing gold and silver jewellery and costume jewellery, from her home in Link Lane, Wallington.

On Friday, January 31, Beddington South Safer Neighbourhoods Team received a report that a jewellery box had been found discarded in bushes in a front garden in Great Woodcote Park Purley.

Inside the box there was a gift tag with a woman’s Christian name on it which matched the 77-year-old woman’s.

Unfortunately only some of the costume jewellery remained but officers said the owner was “very pleased and impressed”.