Intrigue turned to astonishment for John Buckingham when an exotic letter which dropped on his doormat turned out to contain a rare 200-year-old Padstow Bank note stolen from a museum more than 30 years ago.

The simple white envelope, dotted with colourful Caribbean stamps, had no return address and was addressed in handwriting to the care of the Padstow Museum.

As chairman, Mr Buckingham had carefully opened the correspondence, wondering who was reaching out to their little collection of antiquities from across the ocean.

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"I was very surprised," he said. "When I saw the envelope and the postmark I first thought, 'who is writing to me from St Lucia?' I just opened it and there was no covering letter or anything. There was a plastic sleeve, like the type a collector might use, and inside was this 1 note."

It doesn't look much, but this note would have been a few months' wages for most people in 1819.

However the mystery was about to deepen when Mr Buckingham inspected the note further.

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"The note was issued by the Padstow Bank of Thomas Rawlings in 1819 and I knew we had a note like that in the collection. So I got out my book and my magnifying glass and checked the note I had been sent with the one in he book about the museum which was published in the 1970s. It was the same note."

Watch: John Buckingham tell how Padstow Museum was reunited with a rare 1 note.

Mr Buckingham was aware the note had been reported as stolen from the museum in June 1984.

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"I have no idea who sent us the note back," he said. "There was return address. I did wonder if the person who stole it sent it back and because there was no covering letter you can't help but think it, but that would be just speculation.

The envelope containing the rare 1 note.

"I'm just very pleased that the note is back at the museum. I don't think it is worth very much, but it's important that it is back at the museum at last."

The note is a fascinating relic of Regency era Padstow and at the time would have been a sizeable sum of money when housemaids earned around 7 a year and unskilled labourers and fishermen in the harbour earned far less.

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But the note also charts the rise and fall of what was then one of the most powerful families in north Cornwall.

Thomas Rawlings had moved to Padstow from St Columb with his father the previous century and became a wealthy merchant, setting up his own bank and selling everything from hemp, to iron and timber.

John Buckingham with the Padstow Bank 1 note, now back at the Padstow Museum

As he moved up the social ladder, so his family demanded homes to reflect their standing in the community. One Rawlings home is now St Petroc's Hotel and Bistro, which is part of Rick Stein's empire in Padstow.

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By the time the bank note was printed in 1819, Rawlings had built a magnificent mansion, Saunders Hill, which was said to be second only in scale and importance to Prideaux Place, the Elizabethan manor house which still stands today.

A year later, Rawlings died and without his leadership the carefully nurtured business began to unravel and soon collapsed.

The opulent residence built by Thomas Rawlings. A car park now stands on the site.

Stylish Saunders Hill was said to have been bought by the owners of Prideaux Place, who demolished it and the site is now occupied by The Lawns car park.

However a potential glimpse into the past has recently appeared at tennis courts nearby where a hole in the ground is thought to have been caused by a ground subsiding into what where the old cellars of Saunders Hill.

The note will be available to view when Padstow Museum reopens at Easter.

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Mysterious return from the Caribbean of stolen rare 200 year-old ... - Cornwall Live