A Dutch watchmaker from Grootschermer has taken up the challenge of repairing a Rolex watch lost by a British farmer 50 years ago and thought to have been eaten by a cow.

The watch was found last month by someone using a metal detector on land still owned and farmed by James Steele who is now 95.

Steel lost the watch in the early 1970s when he “suddenly realised” its bracelet had broken and told reporters that “a cow could have eaten it with a mouthful of grass.

Steele told the BBC the discovery of the Rolex Air King was a “stroke of luck”.  

“The face has gone greenish but it has not rusted up,” he said, adding that he would hold onto it as a keepsake as it would “cost a bomb” to do anything with.

But now the watch is being painstakingly restored by Dutchman and vintage watch expert Kalle Slaap, who describes the timepiece as amazing and hopes to make it work again.

He tracked down the Steel family after reading about the find and has offered to get the watch working again for free, telling the Telegraaf he could not resist the challenge.

The rust is now being removed from the mechanism in Slaap’s workshop and parts are already starting to shine again, he told RTL. “We’ll then take it apart and go through it piece by piece to see what can still be used,” he said.

“I’ve promised that before Christmas we’ll go as a team to England to meet the Steel family,” he said. “He’s going to get his own watch back. It would be cheating just to swap the works.”