A FORGOTTEN Merseyside rowing  race of 119 years ago will be revived on  Sunday after an amazing discovery at  a London antiques market.

Simon Parkinson, 22, a student from  Runcorn, spotted a Victorian silver  salver while at Battersea Market’s  bric-a-brac stalls last spring.

The eight inch-wide salver was very  dirty, but after rubbing the inscription  he found to his astonishment words  about a Mersey rowing club.

As his mother Jane, father Damian  and two sisters are Runcorn Rowing  Club members, he bought the salver.

After proper cleaning, the full engraved text emerged from under decades of grime.

This stated: “Mersey Rowing Club,  Captain’s Pairs, Sept 5, 1891, W T  Wood, J Snape, Stroke”.

When Runcorn Rowing Club members attended the Mersey Rowing  Club’s summer fund-raising dinner  they took the lost trophy with them.

They threw down the gauntlet of  reviving the race and the challenge of  winning the trophy. Mersey Rowing Club, based at  Queen’s Dock, Liverpool, will compete  at Runcorn on the 119th anniversary  on September 5.

Mr Parkinson, a business student at  Sheffield Hallam University, collects  silverware.

He said: “This caught my eye and  the stall-holder said it was pewter, so I  bartered him down from £24 to £8.

“At home after cleaning the plate I  could see it was silver-plate with an  Elkington Co Sheffield hallmark.

“My parents were even more excited  than I was when I told them about it.

“Back in the 1890s, this trophy  would have cost a lot of money and would  have been specially selected for the  race because of the specific date on it.

“It was probably bought from a Liverpool silver merchant when there  was a lot of wealth in the city. The market stall-holder told me it  was part of a house clearance.”