A piece of New Zealand's war history discovered during a loft clean up and saved from going on a bonfire has been loaned for display for the centenary of Anzac Day.

Surrey Comet:

Michael Messina, 60, from Walton, was refurbishing his home in Dudley Road in about 1980 and found among other dusty belongings an embroidered blanket with messages to Kiwi soldiers.

The home is not far from Mount Felix Hospital, in the aptly name New Zealand Avenue, a large mansion by the Thames offered to the New Zealand War Contingent Association as a military hospital during the First World War.

Mr Messina had cleared out his loft and threw what he thought was rubbish on a bonfire. He said: "As it started to burn something caught the moonlight. I just noticed something unusual about it and removed it from the fire."

It turned out to be an embroidered blanket from 1916 with 56 individual embroidered messages to the soldiers recovering at the hospital. It is thought to have been stitched in the South Island town of Stirling.

Mr Messina said: "Days later my wife washed it and we were so surprised on how unusual it was."

He hung onto it for all these years but as the 100th national day of remembrance for Australia and New Zealand is on April 25 of this year, he thought he would bring the blanket out of retirement.

Mr Messina met the New Zealand Ambassador on Friday, February 20, at St Mary's Church to hand over the blanket.

It will be on display at New Zealand House, London, in time for the Gallipoli centenary in two months.