Reunited after 38 years – the brother and sister who lived just 300 yards apart

But yesterday they were celebrating being reunited after 64-year-old Ken discovered that Yvonne, 62, was living 300 yards from his home.

When they finally met, Ken admitted he had regularly walked past his sister’s house for years and had often spotted her in the garden, without realising who she was.

They grew up together in Salford, Greater Manchester, but both of their parents died when they were small children and they were placed in the care of a family friend.

They stayed in touch after Ken left home at 21.

But they lost contact when he went to visit her house in Manchester’s Moss Side district and found it had been demolished in a slum clearance programme. Both went their separate ways, never knowing what had happened to the other.

Ken became a joiner, met and married his wife Carolyn and had four children and six grandchildren. Yvonne also married and had four children and 10 grandchildren.

After several failed attempts to contact his sister, Ken finally wrote to his local newspaper’s In Touch column just before Christmas.

Soon afterwards, he received a call from an old school friend and five minutes later the phone rang again and it was Yvonne – introducing herself after all those years.

It was then that they discovered that they lived round the corner from each other in Reddish, Greater Manchester – Ken in Gorton Road and Yvonne in Wentworth Road.

Ken, who moved to his current home seven years ago to be near his daughter, said: “I shot round to see Yvonne and it was great. I’ve walked past her house lots of times and I have even seen her in the garden.

“I have also walked past her in the street and never realised it was my sister because we have changed so much.”

He added: “I tried lots of different avenues over the years to try to trace Yvonne and it all came to nothing.

“I often wondered what had happened to our kid and I thought we would eventually get back in touch. But time went by and it never happened and I was beginning to wonder if she was still alive.

“And then I thought that as it was Christmas and I would be 65 next birthday, I just had to do something and it has worked out brilliantly.

“Getting back together like this is wonderful and we have lots of plans to visit each other’s families.”

Yvonne said: “It is so nice to see Ken again. It has been such a long time and I am just amazed that we have been living so close. It’s just so overwhelming.”

Ken’s daughter Nicola Dawes said: “It has been the best Christmas present ever and the only thing my dad has wanted for a long time.

“Our family has doubled in size overnight and we are all happy to be getting to know each other after all this time.”

Ken and Yvonne will today pay an emotional visit to the grave in Agecroft cemetery, Salford, of their father George, an engineer who died in 1952 when Ken was eight, and mother Mary, who died five years later.