DOCUMENTS and exhibits at a North Yorkshire museum had a special relevance to one group of visitors.

The Green Howards spent 24 years serving in Sri Lanka at the turn of the 19th Century.

Some of the trinkets the soldiers brought back from the island, off the southern coast of India, are on display in the regimental museum in Richmond.

And when a party of Sri Lankans visited the area on an educational exchange programme organised by the Wensleydale Rotary Club, a visit to the museum was arranged to allow them an opportunity to relive a chapter in their nation's history.

The Green Howards' posting to the Indian Ocean meant they missed the Napoleonic Wars - but still lost more men and equipment than some of the regiments which served under Wellington.

One Green Howards unit was all but wiped out in an uprising in Kandy, in what was then Ceylon.

However, maps, diaries and china from the era still survive today, including an entree dish found at a market in Colombo in 1910 and later presented to the museum.

"Our Sri Lankan visitors were fascinated by our collection of information about the regiment's time in their country," said curator, Major Roger Chapman.

"We are grateful to the Rotary Club for asking us to show them round the museum."