WHEN Brenda Caunter lost her wedding ring while lifting cabbages in a field near Mawnan Smith in 1972 she thought she’d never see it again.

But just over 40 years later an amateur metal detector scouring the same field came across her band of gold practically exactly where she’d lost it.

Brenda and her husband Dave, from Mawnan Smith, were married in September 1969 with Dave saving up to buy his wife the 9ct gold band wedding ring. Little did he know that less than three years later it would come off his wife’s finger and fall into the mud.

“Back then that ring cost me a fortune,” said Dave. “When Brenda told me she’d lost it we went back up there with our own metal detectors but they were not nearly as good as they are now and we didn’t find it. Eventually we had to buy a replacement.”

Dave and Brenda forgot about the ring, but when he saw the treasure hunter up in the field it brought the memories flooding back.

“I was going out in the village and saw him up in the field and when I saw his wife and the children I asked her: ‘What’s he up to in that field with that metal detector? Tell him if he finds a ring, it belongs to Brenda.’ “When I got back from the village I had a phone call telling me that her husband had found that ring. He had come home and told her he’d found a ring. She said ‘I know who that belongs to, you’d better ring Dave’. I couldn’t believe it after all these years.”

The finder of the ring, who wishes to remain anonymous, said: “I couldn’t believe it when my wife said she knew who the ring belonged to.

“It was in absolutely perfect condition, despite the number of years it had been there. I’m interested in history and I have often found mediaeval coins which are absolutely fascinating. That’s why I was up there.”

The couple took the nine carat ring to jewellers in Truro and despite the fact that the field had been ploughed up a number of times over the years, apart from an easily repairable crack, it cleaned up without a scratch.

Brenda told the Packet: “I was working in the field when I took my gloves off, and that’s probably when it came off. When we got the phone call to say it had been found I didn’t know what to say.”

Falmouth Packet: