Members of the New Quay lifeboat team travelled down to Cornwall to present a set of old cast-iron door handles to their counterparts at Penlee.

The handles taken down by mechanic Bernie Davies and Roger Couch, New Quay RNLI lifeboat operations manager, replaced the set stolen from the historic Penlee lifeboat station in Mousehole.

The former lifeboat building is dedicated to those lost at sea, including the entire crew of the 1981 Penlee lifeboat disaster.

The old station has been left the same since the Solomon Browne lifeboat launched and never returned on that treacherous day.

The replacement handles were once fitted to the front doors of the old lifeboat station in New Quay.

Before the station was rebuilt in the early 1990s they were removed by Mr Davies as a keepsake.

“I was shocked and upset on reading on Facebook that someone had stolen the Penlee lifeboat station door handle,” he said.

“I knew I had to do something and remembered that I had kept the old New Quay lifeboat station’s cast-iron door handles which were exactly the same.

“I saw that they were appealing for replicas so I went to my garage and rummaged around.”

Bernie and Roger subsequently travelled the 313 miles to Mousehole to present the handles to Penlee coxswain Patch Harvey.

“We are all thrilled to receive these beautiful old cast-iron handles from our colleagues at New Quay,” he said.

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