A forklift driver has been accepted into a local heritage group that is one of the largest of its kind in the UK.

The Croydon Advertiser reported that Martin Miles, who started an interactive historical group on Facebook, spent months 'courting' The Bourne Society and has now been invited to join it.

Miles, 30, met the society's key players this month and showed them his extensive collection of photos and stories. "It was a very proud moment for me, meeting the wizards of history," he says. "They were so pleased to meet me and shocked that I was so young and doing all this as my little hobby.".

Miles' Facebook group has nearly 800 members with the numbers rising weekly. The forklift driver says he might consider a career change and is hoping his new friends can offer him a job.

The Bourne Society was founded in 1956 with about a dozen members. Today, it has 1,823 members and considers itself the largest heritage organisation in the UK.