A former music shop owner is hoping amateur history detectives can help solve a decades-old mystery.

Eileen Bargery, 92, believes an object she found in Tavistock town centre is a Tavistock Abbey artefact.

After seeing an article in the Tavistock Times asking residents to come forward with any objects which might be remains of the former tenth century Benedict monastery, she contacted the paper.

Eileen, who used to run a Tavistock music sheet shop, some years ago dug out what looks like a pottery or weathered glass fragment from an earth bank and has kept it safe ever since.

In 1981 she was taking her dog for a walk alongside the River Tavy when she saw the object sticking out of the bank at the Abbey Bridge entrance to the path.

After moving to Yelverton Residential Home from her home in Downgate, near Stoke Climsland, her family brought the object to her and she started researching its origins online.

Eileen said: “I’ve had this a long time, but I didn’t think much about it until I saw the article in the Tavistock Times and started looking it up. I think it might be a piece of a broken monks’ mug.

“I do think how exciting it is to hold something that monks might have held and used hundreds of years ago from about the year 900.

“I’d like to know more about it and to find out if it is from the abbey.”

Eileen added: “I only saw it as I was taking the dog for a walk and saw something protruding from what was then an earth bank, at about eye level.

“I went home to get a knife and dug round it to loosen the earth and took it out and took it home and have kept it since.”

Eileen’s find will be looked at by the Tavistock Heritage Trust which is running a project bringing the abbey’s past alive for the public.