A WITNEY woman was stunned to discover she had two long lost half-sisters after spending more than 60 years not knowing.

Jennifer Coville, who was born in Witney and spent the first years of her life on Kilkenny Farm in Brize Norton, first heard about the two blood relatives earlier this year, after being contacted by one of her half-sisters and sent two birth certificates bearing her mother’s name.

The 64-year-old is looking to explore the links of her family further and is hoping to find other relatives of the man she believes may have fathered one of her younger sisters.

Mrs Coville said: “I was on the website Ancestry doing my family tree and I received an email from someone saying she was my half-sister. I told her she must be mistaken as I don’t remember my mother having any children after I was born. Then she sent me two birth certificates.

“It was a bit mind-blowing to find I have two half-sisters I never knew about.”

The birth certificates, sent by Mrs Coville’s half-sister, who now lives in the north of England, revealed that her mother, Barbara, gave birth to two other daughters in 1955 and 1959. Mrs Coville, who now lives in St Ives, Cambridgeshire, had only been aware of one sibling, her older brother, John.

Barbara and Leonard Coville, Jennifer's father, divorced in 1955 after the first half-sister was born and put up for adoption.

She continued: “I found it quite exciting. I never had any sisters and now I have two.

“But it is weird when you haven’t met the person and didn’t know they existed. Maybe when a parent finds a child there is an immediate bond, but when it’s a sister it’s like they’re just somebody from down the road.”

Having been contacted by her youngest half-sister, Mrs Coville was eager to find the elder. To help with this she contacted social services at Cambridgeshire County Council. Councils have a duty of care to look for lost siblings.

The process took about five months of unfruitful searching in the UK, until they contracted an expert, who found the other half-sister living abroad in Europe in just a week.

Mrs Coville said one of the most interesting things about discovering her relatives was realising the distinction between nature and nurture.

She said, of her sister in the north: “When I was young I played hockey for Oxfordshire. I found my half-sister loved hockey and went on to teach fitness.

“There are some really weird similarities. You like and hate the same foods – so obviously it’s not to do with what you’re fed but taste buds.”