James Steele’s family still farms the land at Treflach Hall with son Andrew taking over the reins and around 50 years ago, lost the expensive watch after a cow swallowed it.
Assuming it was lost in one of her four stomachs, James immediately bought another watch and didn’t pay any thought to the one lost in the belly of one of his animals.
The lost watch became a family story for Andrew and his siblings but after allowing metal detectorist Liam King onto the land because of his own interest in history, the watch was dug up much to everyone’s shock.
“When I went and bought the new watch, I never thought I would see the old one ever again,” he said.
“I though the cow had eaten it and that was the end of it because when it went away, I thought they would have found something.
“But obviously they hadn’t as it was still in the field which I had scoured over and over at the time.
“I looked diligently – it was one frosty morning and we were getting the cows in for the vet.
“The strap was loose – I’ve still got that – and the cow ate it.
“We’ve been ploughing the fields every three years but now it’s just grass so it could be found.
“I was looking at it – it would cost a fortune to repair so I’ll just have it as a keepsake.”
The watch, according to Andrew is now very green and stopped at 12.40pm, and he explained the history of bringing detectorist Liam into the hall.
He said: “When I was a kid, I found a coin from 1789 and didn’t know what it was because I didn’t have the Internet obviously.
It was copper and a token coin with Liverpool, Congleton and Macclesfield written on it.
“Years later, I did a history talk and googled the coin and found out that a man called Charles Rowe, a copper maker in 1789 from Macclesfield, had come to a local colliery because he needed it to help make his copper.
“It was great to pinpoint someone who it belonged to and possibly his son had been climbing the cedar tree, where I found it, and I thought it was amazing.
“When Liam, I asked him to look around there for more but he didn’t find coins but he found lots of other stuff and has been going back and forth over the field for the last nine months.
“And then he went and found my dad’s watch which he thought was in a cow.”
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