A GARDENING trophy which vanished more than 60 years ago has been rediscovered in Garsington and could be reintroduced into village life.

The Garsington Garden Bowl, presented annually to the winner of Garsington’s Best Kept Garden competition, went missing after 1944, and even went to America by mistake when one resident emigrated.

But decades later, the silver trophy has been retrieved from a house in Wheatley Road and is back in the hands of Garsington Parish Council.

Now councillors are deciding what to do with it.

Council chairman Godfrey Eden said: “The parish council is considering whether it’s appropriate to reinstate it.

“There is a gardening club within the village, but it may not be everyone’s wish that happens.

“Regrettably it used to have a base which is missing, so we don’t know how many winners there were.”

No one in the village knows how old the trophy is, but the competition is believed to have been launched before or during the Second World War. The only engraving reads, A H Jones 1944.

Basil Townsend, who was parish council chairman for 25 years, remembers the bowl was kept at Garsington Manor for a time.

The 85-year-old, of Wheatley Road, who stepped down from the post in 1994, said: “It was kept at Garsington Manor where the late Sir John Wheeler-Bennett lived in the fifties and when he died, Lady Wheeler-Bennett moved to America in the eighties.

“The furniture people packed it by mistake.

“One night she rang me from America and told me about it. She sent it back but the base was missing.

“I’ve had it in the bedroom since then.

“I thought the parish council ought to have it back so I gave it to Godfrey.

“I’ve had a look through old records and I can’t find any reference to it in the parish council minutes, no one knows much about it.

“It’s up to parish councillors what they do with it now.”

Anyone who can shed any light on the history of the bowl is invited to email the parish council via parishcouncil@garsington.org