TEARFUL bride Daphne Knights has been reunited with a wedding ring after it was found in a Felixstowe garden – 35 YEARS after she lost it!When retired vicar Christopher Leffler embarked on a gardening project he never imagined he would be raking up the past – and revealing the precious band of gold.

TEARFUL bride Daphne Knights has been reunited with a wedding ring after it was found in a Felixstowe garden – 35 YEARS after she lost it!

When retired vicar Christopher Leffler embarked on a gardening project he never imagined he would be raking up the past – and revealing the precious band of gold.

But what was even more amazing than the wedding ring he found beneath the soil was that he was able to reunite it with its owner who lost it 35 years ago. For Rev Leffler recognised the initials inscribed inside the ring as those of the couple from whom he had bought his house – and was able to take the ring back to them.

The wedding ring belonged to Daphne Knights who had been heartbroken when she lost it in the late 1960s – and had thought she would never see it again, even though it was never far from her mind.

It had been placed on her finger by her husband Arthur, now 73, when they were married at Rushmere Church on March 16, 1957.

"I loved my ring and it nearly broke my heart when I lost it because I take my wedding vows very seriously. It was the ring Arthur gave me and we had it inscribed with our initials and wedding date," said Mrs Knights, 75, of High Road East, Old Felixstowe.

"I don't know how I lost it. I thought I had lost it on Felixstowe beach and we looked everywhere for it – and I kept on looking.

"When we sold our car at the time I said to the garage if you find a wedding ring in it anywhere, it's mine. Even when we sold our house to Rev Leffler five years ago I told him I had lost the ring."

When the ring was lost the couple were living in Walton High Street, Felixstowe, a house which Mr Knights, who worked at the port and later on the Townsend Thoresen ships, had built.

After a while the couple – who have a son Ken and daughter in law Laurie, and two grandchildren, Mark and Richard – felt the ring was lost forever, so Mr Knights bought his wife a replacement.

"I never dreamed I would see my ring again – especially after all this time. When Rev Leffler turned up with it I was so happy that I turned round and gave him a hug and a kiss. I cried, too," said Mrs Knights.

Mr Leffler, a former rector of Trimley, said: "I had shifted a lot of soil in the garden from a raised bed ready to build a wall, and I was just raking it flat when I saw the ring.

"I had forgotten that Mrs Knights had told me to look out for it when we bought the house, but I recognised the initials inside the ring and knew it must be hers.

"It's lovely that she has been reunited with it after all this time. I lost my own wedding ring in St Mary's Church at Trimley, so I know what it's like."

Factfile: It was 35 years ago . . .

n The Beatles released the famous double White Album and had number one hits with Hey Jude and Lady Madonna.

n Civil rights campaigner Martin Luther King and US presidential candidate Robert Kennedy were both assassinated.

n Rock festivals, hippies, free love, meditation, and flowing robes were all the rage among the young.

n Soviet troops and tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia's capital to crush the Prague Spring reform movement.

n Police hurling gas grenades clashed with more than 5,000 students in riots in the famous Student Revolt in Paris's Latin Quarter.

n Jacqueline Kennedy married Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis on the island of Skorpios.

n Richard Nixon was elected President of America, a country besieged by protests over its involvement in the Vietnam War.

source: Evening Star files

with pix by Richard Snasdell, taken June 12

factfile at end of the copy