Lost ring is found under Gwyddelwern chapel floorboards...35 years later

Dec 10 2008 by Staff Reporter, Denbigh Visitor

A MOTHER who lost a gold ring 35 years ago when it slipped through a crack in the floorboards of a chapel has finally got it back.

Carys Williams never forgot that she lost her precious signet ring in Moriah Chapel, Gwyddelwern, near Corwen, just a fortnight after she was given it.

She gave up hope of ever seeing it again but recently drove past the chapel and noticed it was being demolished – and realised she finally had a chance to get it back.

Delighted Carys yesterday showed her ring off and vowed it would never leave her finger again. She recalled how proud she was when she was given it by her parents, Seu and Blodwen Williams, on her 16th birthday.

But two weeks later, heartbreak was to follow. It was while she attended Sunday school at the chapel that she took the ring off her finger and toyed with it, only for it to slip to the floor.

“It rolled under the seat and disappeared down into a crack in the floorboards. I have thought many times about the ring I have under the floorboards at the chapel,” said Carys, now a mother of two in her early 50s.

Her chance to retrieve it came when she noticed workmen carefully demolishing the chapel ready for re-building, possibly in Canada. She told contractors the story but was told she could not search for it herself.

“They had already lifted the seats and the floorboards in the place where I lost the ring and I asked if I could have a look.

“They said that it was too dangerous for me to go in,” she said.

The men promised they would have a look and Carys left, thinking that was the end of it.

But one of the workmen riddled out the soil under the floorboards for two hours and found it – as good as new.

The discovery was all the more poignant because she received the ring back just two weeks after her father died.

Carys, whose twin sons Dylan and Iwan are now 17, said that the ring brought back so many memories.

“It is on my finger now. I don’t think I will ever take it off again,” she said. “The workman said that he was delighted that he had found it and had put it on his own finger in case it got lost again!”

Howard Rees, boss of the contracting firm which demolished the chapel ready for re-sale, said: “This very nice lady called in at the site and explained what had happened. One of the lads spent some time looking and found it.

“It is amazing to think that this ring, which was of great sentimental value, had just been lying there in the soil and rubbish under the floor boards for years and years.”