A PENSIONER has told of her surprise after The Argus revealed the answer to a family mystery her late husband had been researching for years.

Barbara Cox is overjoyed but has not been able to sleep after the newspaper revealed the final resting place of Pre-Raphaelite model and muse Fanny Cornforth.

She said the only disappointment was that her late husband and relative of the famous Sussex beauty had passed away before the truth was uncovered.

The 76-year-old said that the famed good looks and dazzling red hair of Fanny had been passed on through the generations of the Cox family.

In Saturday’s paper, we revealed that the century-old mystery of where Fanny, who was born Sarah Cox in Steyning in 1835, was laid to rest.

It was uncovered in the archives of the West Sussex Record Office.

Documents showed that an aging Fanny entered the Graylingwell Hospital “asylum” in 1907 and died two years later at the age of 74, suffering from senile dementia.

The article was the answer that Barbara’s husband Frederick had been searching for more than a decade.

He had first found a picture of the famous beauty, who sat for at least 60 oils, watercolours, pastels and pencil drawings for Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and made the link to stories told by his aunt about a model relative.

He then searched through his family tree to find the family link and began an exhaustive search looking in local cemeteries for anyone who bore the Cox name.

Barbara, from Manor Gardens in Brighton, said: “I’d go on trips with him and so on but it was his baby.

“We found Fanny’s uncle blacksmith’s place in Steyning – it is a wedding shop now – and we went to Steyning museum as we thought we might find something in there.

“From then it was lots of visits to different places, different cemeteries in towns and cities over the years. It was an adventure.

“At one point we thought she might have gone to France and thought that was where the search would end because we couldn’t afford to go to France.”

The pair almost solved the mystery for themselves at Chichester Cemetery but could not find her final resting place because she was given a common grave with no headstone.

Frederick gathered quite an archive over the years from Fanny’s correspondence, including letters exchanged with a Mr Bancock from America.

Barbara said: “My children were so excited when they found out. They came with us on trips to graveyards and things, even in their forties.

“I’m angry that this has all come out now before Frederick could find out for himself. I’m not angry at him of course, but the man upstairs for not letting him have his baby.”