Ingrid chipped away to win piece of history

"I swapped my camera for a hammer and chisel which I borrowed from somebody and did my bit in trying to knock the wall down," said Ingrid, from Milford, near Stafford.

"I couldn't just stand there and photograph it. I wanted to be involved. It was a moment in history. I was joining the army of ‘mauerspechte’ – wall woodpeckers – who would work until the large scale demolition of the wall would begin in February 1990. "

She still has those remarkable concrete souvenirs chipped from the Berlin Wall.

"They're here in my living room. It's a piece of history. I know that when I went to Russia, from the many conversations I had with people and the friends I got to know, how much change happened when that wall came down. It was momentous and changed people's lives forever."

Ingrid, who despite her surname is English, lived in Coventry at the time. She had been in Spain training to be a teacher of English, and she and a friend invited themselves to visit Ingrid's sister in Celle, between Hamburg and Hanover, for an early Christmas. In Berlin, 170 miles away, the drama was unfolding.

"I went there out of curiosity. Me and my friend Linda Watson hired a car and made the three-hour journey to West Berlin."

They arrived in the city in mid-November 1989, just over a week after the announcement of the opening of the border, and soon had their first glimpse of the wall.

"The noise struck me. I always think sound has been an underrated sense. When we approached the wall the sound was becoming louder and louder, sounds of shouting, cheering, and a babble of different languages, and people climbing onto the wall trying to knock it down, and leaning against it.

"It was a huge celebration and the roads were littered with champagne bottles and corks. Obviously celebrations had been going on for some time."