A WIDOW has been reunited with the precious wedding ring she thought she lost forever more than 20 years ago.

Cherith Harding, from Hereford, said she never forgot about the ring, part of a pair when joined with her husband's, which went missing in 1991.

Mrs Harding's husband, Wally Harding died last September, aged 68, from prostate cancer.

But while her son, Michael Harding, and his friend, Simon Lewis, were digging to prepare her garden for new slabs, Mr Lewis noticed something in the dirt.

He showed his friend who initially thought the item was a washer. But closer inspection proved it was a ring.

Mrs Harding said: "My son came to the window and said 'we have found this ring'. It went through my mind quite quickly but I thought 'it can't be'."

A friend who was at the address at the time washed the item and Mrs Harding then realised it was hers, matching her husband's ring which she has been wearing.

"My legs went from under me. I couldn't believe it. If it had been a plain ring I could have kept thinking perhaps it's someone else's but it belongs with the other one," she said.

"For that to happen it's like a miracle. I have looked so many times and I cried for a week when I lost it. It meant so much – I didn't want it off my finger."

Mrs Harding had been married to her husband, Wally Harding, for seven years when she realised she had lost the ring.

"We looked everywhere and ever since then if a carpet has been taken up I have always looked and wondered if I would ever find it," she said.

He son, Michael Harding, added that everyone was speechless to find something which they thought was lost forever.

"We all agreed that dad was looking over us and helped us find it. I am still speechless," he said.

Mrs Harding, who described her husband as a 'rock' and a 'one-off who will never be forgotten', now plans to keep the ring safely on her finger.

The couple's daughter, Vicky Lightowler, will also pay tribute to her dad this weekend at a fundraising weekend in his memory.

She will be joined by friends and family for a rock 'n' roll night at MFA Bowl, Station Approach, tomorrow (Friday July 3) and there will also be a golf day at Herefordshire Golf Club in Wormsley on Sunday.

Funds raised at both events will go to Prostate Cancer UK.