A 100-year-old book of Yorkshire dialects has finally returned to its author’s spiritual home — after a journey which took it thousands of miles around the world.

Publisher Aethelbert Binns took the leather-bound collection of his newspaper columns with him when his family emigrated from Wilsden to Tasmania in 1907.

But last year, Aethelbert’s grandchildren, who now live in Australia and America, decided the family heirloom should be sent back to Wilsden.

So it was packaged and addressed to the parish council chairman, Peter Allison, to send to his work address in Halifax.

Unfortunately, the sender did not specify which country and it eventually reached Mr Allison weeks later, via Halifax, in Nova Scotia, Canada.

The volume, called Yorkshire Dialect Words, had already had a trip across Australia, from Adelaide to Melbourne, as Aethelbert’s descendants wanted to make copies before it was returned home. It will now go on show at an exhibition about the village’s history next month.

Historian Astrid Hansen, 71, who is curating the exhibition, said: “Aethelbert’s family, who each have a copy on disk, all agreed that it should come back home.

“The person in Australia addressed it, quite correctly, to Peter Allison, in Halifax, but not Halifax, West Yorkshire; Halifax, Canada, so it took a while to get to us.

“We kept waiting and waiting — and when it turned up it had postmarks all over it. It had really been on its travels. I suppose we are lucky it got to us.”

The book is made up of a series of articles written between 1891 and 1901 for the Leeds Mercury newspaper. Father-of-four Aethelbert, a cousin of J B Priestley, wrote them while living in Main Street, Wilsden.

It will go on show alongside photographs, maps and other artefacts charting the village’s history from the Domesday Book onwards, before it is put in the West Yorkshire Archive, in Bradford.

Wilsden Old and New will open at St Matthew’s Church, Wilsden, on Friday, March 20, from 2 to 4.30pm. It will run for the next three days.