IT WAS like finding a needle in a haystack - just a lot more precious and a good bit smellier!

Gardeners have unearthed an irreplaceable family heirloom in a compost heap - 18 months after a boy lost it in a nursing home garden.

Now the nuns there are trying to trace the boy, who said it was his dead father's wedding ring.

The young lad sparked off the hunt after he lost the ring in the grounds of Nazareth House nursing home, Preston New Road, Blackburn.

Gardeners Barrie Watson and Gordon Malthouse kept a constant look-out for it, and now it has turned up in the compost.

Sister Louis, one of the Catholic nuns who run the run the nursing and retirement home, said: "Around 18 months ago one of the sisters told a group of boys to stop climbing on the walls surrounding the garden because they are very high.

"They gave her some cheek so I went out to talk them myself. One of the youngsters was very upset, he was almost distraught so I asked what was the matter.

"He told me he was trying to get into the garden because he dropped this wedding ring over the wall.

"The reason he was so upset was because it belonged to his father who had died in a car crash."

Sister Louis told the boy he could come and look in the garden whenever he wanted, provided he asked first.

She told him to keep in touch and he used to call round about once a month, but he stopped coming some time ago.

Sister Louis added: "The gardeners were really careful and every time they removed compost they used to check for the ring.

"We would love to get in touch with the little lad because the ring was obviously very important to him."

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