NEARLY six months after Mike Sutton and his wife Teresa found hundreds of false legs under their floorboards they have found a good home.

It was only by chance they found the stash of more than 200 false limbs after having plumbing work done in their new home in King Charles Way, Bridport.

Since then the Suttons have been trying to get rid of the legs.

Mrs Sutton said she had phoned every organisation she, and friends, could think of but no one wanted them.

Then a few weeks ago ex-Colfox student Adrian Wheeler now living in Kingston upon Thames heard about the legs from his aunt, who is a friend of the Suttons.

Amputee Mr Wheeler is a member of the Limbless Association and he suggested the association would have a use for the false legs.

Mrs Sutton said the association chairman, chief executive and a technician from Pakistan had already been to look and found there were more than 200 legs - and they would be happy to have them.

She said it was going to be a long job to stack the legs in a van to taken them back to the association's headquarters in London.

She said: "The legs are not in a cellar, it is just a space under the floorboards and we might never have discovered them if we hadn't needed plumbing done.

"It is very difficult for anybody over a certain size to go down there.

"They will have to be taken out one at a time, not because of their size but their weight, they are very heavy.

"Every time somebody suggested someone who might like them I rushed to the phone - I have tried eight or nine different organisations, including hospitals and orthopaedic centres but they are not something that everybody wants and not in this sort of quantity.

"But the (limbless) association chairman said how much difference it makes to people who have had this sort of trauma to see someone with a false leg up and about.

"The association seems like a very well established and very caring charity. Finding these legs has opened up a whole new world that I would never have known anything about," said Mrs Sutton.

  • Dave Park who had Davy's Locker in Bridport explained to the Echo last year (August 31) that the legs were originally collected to be sent for use by the physically handicapped in Africa.

When the airline found out how much the shipment weighed they refused to ship them.

So they stayed in Mr Park's home, stored under the floorboards, and he completely forgot about them 12 years later when he retired to Portugal.