Like many teenagers, Judy Smith wrote down some of her most intimate thoughts in a personal diary.

Now she has been reunited with the journal she kept when she was 16 after it was found in an east London flat.

The diary was discovered by father-and-son builders Jim and Charlie Grace who were renovating the property and coincidentally live in North Weald, the same Essex village as the diary's author.

Smith, now 67, said it was "incredible" to have the diary returned.

It dates from 1975, the year when Bye Bye Baby by the Bay City Rollers was the top-selling UK single and Margaret Thatcher took over as leader of the Conservatives.

It was found in December alongside old newspapers, magazines and crisp packets on the third floor of the building the father and son were working on in South Woodford.

"I thought... it didn't look like rubbish," said Charlie, 20.

Jim, 62, said: "For me, it was just like there's a little bit of history sitting there and I felt sure it would mean something to somebody.

"I just thought, 'Oh, somebody put their life on paper here. Oh, that was a little brief window in history.'

"Charlie was super fascinated. He more or less read all the way through it and he got hung up on the idea that somebody could get a cab from Enfield to some place in the city centre for 50p and he thought it was amazing."

Then Jim's wife Yvette, 55, decided to do some "detective work" on Facebook and her online search reached Dubai where Smith's daughter lived.

She said it was "hilarious" to discover that Smith was living so close to them in the same village, which has just a few thousand residents.

"I must have bumped into her or walked past her in the local Co-op or something. There's absolutely no way that I wouldn't have seen this lady before," she said.

Smith, an NHS receptionist, grew up in Snaresbrook, east London.

It is understood that the nearby address where the diary was found had a family connection.

She said she had enjoyed reading back what her 16-year-old self had written.

"I was just cringing. I was just thinking what a naughty girl I was," she told BBC Essex presenter Ben Fryer.

"It's amazing – really incredible – to have that diary from all those years ago."

She contacted the BBC through Your Voice after seeing a similar story about a child's letter being found underneath some stairs 44 years later.

After reading back through the diary, Smith said she rang some of her friends to reminisce about the days they spent together.

She still keeps a diary but joked that it was less detailed than teenage journal and "quite boring" by comparison.

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