Rare letter from wife of Sir Winston Churchill to Wolverhampton family sent days before he died surfaces

The letter to Mr and Mrs Kelly of 21 Argyle Road has a postmark of January 22, 1965 - two days before Sir Winston died.

The letter from Clementine Churchill reads: "I am touched by your thought of me at this time. Thank you so much."

The handwritten letter is on headed paper with the Churchills' address 28 Hyde Park Gate where Sir Winston died on January 24, 1965.

He suffered a stroke 15 days previously, slipping into a deep sleep from which he never awakened.

Earlier in his illness, there had been crowds anxiously waiting for news at the top of the quiet Kensington cul-de-sac - but when the announcement finally came there was only a handful of journalists in the street.

The letter belongs to Allan Hodges from Penn.

He said: "I bought it from Wolverhampton Books & Collectables in Victoria Street years ago.

"I am a big collector of historical things to do with Wolverhampton and I thought you do not see many of these around.

"To be honest I had put it away and it was only when it was in the paper and on the TV about it being 50 years since he died that I remembered about it.

"It took a bit of finding but it is a special item.

"I thought that it would be of interest to people of Wolverhampton."

Mr Hodges does not know anything about Mr or Mrs Kelly but presumes they wrote to Clementine Churchill on hearing that Sir Winston had fallen ill.

Sir Winston Churchill was laid to rest 50 years ago today in the Oxfordshire parish churchyard of Bladon, with only family members present at the private burial.

The church lies just outside the Blenheim estate, where he was born. During the three days lying-in-state, a total of 321,360 people filed past the catafalque. Huge silent crowds lined the route to St Paul's Cathedral for the funeral.

His funeral was the largest state funeral in world history up to that point in time, with representatives from 112 nations. In Europe 350 million people, including 25 million in Britain, watched the funeral on television.

As Churchill's lead-lined coffin passed up the River Thames from Tower Pier to Festival Pier on the MV Havengore, dockers lowered their crane jibs in a salute.

The Royal Artillery fired the 19-gun salute due a head of government, and the RAF staged a fly-by of sixteen English Electric Lightning fighters. The coffin was then taken the short distance to Waterloo station where it was loaded onto a specially prepared and painted carriage as part of the funeral train for its rail journey to Hanborough, seven miles north-west of Oxford.

The funeral train of Pullman coaches carrying his family mourners was hauled by Battle of Britain class steam locomotive No. 34051 Winston Churchill. In the fields along the route, and at the stations through which the train passed, thousands stood in silence to pay their last respects.