A MILITARY museum is to take a leading role in a documentary following an MoD investigation into the identity of an unknown soldier from the First World War.

Staff at the Green Howards Museum, in Trinity Church Square, Richmond, have been helping the BBC's Inside Out team attempt to piece together the case after items found with human remains near the Somme suggested a local connection.

The TV crew had been covering a lengthy Ministry of Defence investigation following the discovery of the human remains, on a former battlefield outside the village of Martinpuich on the Somme.

Items found with the remains suggested he was a soldier from the Green Howards' recruitment area – but the questions of who he was, and if any family could be traced 100 years after he was listed as killed in action, remained unanswered.

Fresh from a starring role in Bargain Hunt on Friday, February 17, the Green Howards will take centre stage once again.

Green Howards Museum director Lynda Powell said: "We were first made aware of the discovery of some remains, and their possible link to the regiment in October 2015.

"We were told remains had been found and we were provided with photographs of the badges found with it.

"These shoulder titles were immediately recognisable as belonging to the 5th Battalion of The Yorkshire Regiment, which is what the Green Howards were known at the time."

"We had to identify all soldiers that were listed as missing between September 25 and 28, 1916. It was a case of sifting through, using information held in the museum’s archive, to rule out those soldiers who it definitely was not.

"This sift provided us with a list of twelve names which is what the MOD and the programme makers were then able to work with in their search for the soldier’s identity."

She added: "We were told by the MoD team who deal with this kind of work that it’s incredibly unusual to gain enough information about an individual who has been discovered after this length of time to ever be able to successfully identify them, but every effort is made to do so. If an identity is confirmed, it means the body can be laid to rest under its own headstone in a Commonwealth War Graves cemetery, and their name finally removed from the Thiepval Memorial, which lists some 77,000 soldiers whose bodies were never found.”

Find out what happens on Monday, February 27on Inside Out, BBC One at 7.30pm.