‘Now I’m terrified. I’ve been told to increase the mortgage on the house to raise the funds but I don’t think I can because I’m self-employed. My house isn’t just my home, it’s the girls’ home, too.

‘Who would have thought that a person could lose their home as a result of selling  a bit of bric-a-brac they’ve had lying around for years?’

The origins of this sorry saga can be traced back years before Andrea’s decision to sell the vase – to the unhappy ending of her relationship with Mrs Galloway’s son, Steven.

Andrea was 23 when the pair met in 1990 and a single mother to a son, Oliver, by her childhood sweetheart Rick, with whom she has remained close friends. Steven, six years older and working for his father’s insurance brokerage, seemed to offer the stability she craved.

As their relationship progressed, Andrea became pregnant with their first child, Sophie, and moved into Steven’s apartment with Oliver. It was during this period that Mrs Galloway claims she lent her son the vase, which she says she regarded as a family heirloom. Andrea says she has no  recollection of it ever being there.

She first remembers seeing it when the family moved to a spacious farmhouse, rented from a local couple. ‘I know the vase was in that house because I remember it being on a shelf by a door, where the kids could have knocked it over at any time,’ she says.

‘In court, Steven said it was explained to me from the beginning that it was only on loan from his mother and that it was valuable.

‘But I used to burn incense in it and nobody ever asked me to treat it in any special way. When we moved again, to another farmhouse, it was in the children’s playroom. I didn’t even think about where it came from because I’d accumulated so much since I left home at 16.

'Look at my house – I’m a clutterbug and I couldn’t tell you where half these things have come from.’

Indeed, the walls of Andrea’s cottage are covered in shelves groaning under the weight of matching cup and saucer sets, little coloured glasses, lamps and, yes, vases. It is not hard to imagine how she could have assumed the Chinese vase was just another trinket she had picked up.

In 1997, she and Steven had another daughter, Phoebe, but their relationship was starting to deteriorate. Gradually, Andrea claims, she noticed that bills were not always being paid on time. In 2001, Steven admitted the brokerage was in trouble.

‘I’d encouraged all my friends and family to use the brokerage and I  had no idea it was in so much debt,’  Andrea says. ‘The company was officially declared bankrupt in 2002 and it was an horrendous time.

‘We moved into my cottage, which I’d owned since before we met and previously rented out, and I was working around the clock in four jobs,  trying to make ends meet. I wanted us  to work through the problems as a family but I didn’t feel he was trying. It was clear the relationship was over.’

Steven moved in with his parents, Evelyn and Jack, while Andrea tried to rebuild her life with her children in the cottage, where the Chinese vase lay forgotten in a box under the stairs. For the next few years, Steven and the Galloways maintained contact with Sophie and Phoebe but Andrea’s own relationship with the family was strained.

In 2008, Andrea decided to sell some of her old junk. ‘I had been through a difficult time and I decided to redecorate and declutter to make a fresh start,’ she says. ‘Phoebe’s birthday was approaching and  I wanted to buy her a laptop to help her with her work.

‘I grabbed a few bits and pieces from under the stairs, including the vase and some old coins I’d had since my childhood, and took them to an antique shop to get them valued.

‘The owner told me he’d give me £375 for the vase but he wanted me to leave the coins overnight to be valued, which I didn’t want to do.

‘In the end, I decided to take them to an auction house, Byrne’s in Chester. They told me they would put a reserve of £80 on the vase, but when I told them about the antique dealer’s offer, they upped it to £500. I thought,

“Wow, hopefully I’ll have enough for Phoebe’s laptop.” Now I wish to God I’d sold it to the antique dealer.’

A couple of days later, Byrne’s called Andrea to inform her that the vase had fetched almost £230,000.

Then she received a call from the police. Having seen the story, Mrs Galloway had not only informed Byrne’s that the vase was hers, she had also reported it to the police as a theft.

‘I didn’t even have a chance to think about the money,’ says Andrea. ‘The next thing I knew, I was defending myself to the police, who didn’t take any further action.

‘When I heard what Evelyn was saying – that I knew full well the vase was a loan and that she’d tried to get it back on numerous occasions – I felt very sad. I couldn’t believe it.’

On the advice of the auction house, Andrea found a solicitor. From the outset, she and her lawyer attempted to settle the matter without going to court. ‘I wanted all the money to be put into trust for the girls, or for us to split it 50/50, but we couldn’t reach an agreement,’ she says.

While Andrea had to pay her own legal costs, pensioner Evelyn received legal aid, which Andrea feels is unfair. In court, Mrs Galloway was able to produce the original catalogue from when her father bought the vase at a sale in Birkenhead, Merseyside, in 1956. In her witness statement, she described Andrea as being emotionally unstable and highly obstructive about the vase.

The law states that if six years pass without an attempt to reclaim an item from somebody, that item becomes theirs. Mrs Galloway said she had repeatedly asked for the vase to be returned since Andrea’s split with her son, but that Andrea had responded by hanging up the phone or slamming the door in her face.

‘I felt utterly betrayed,’ says Andrea. ‘I used to get on well with Evelyn. In fact, I loved her, and hearing her mud-slinging was devastating. If she’d had her way, I would be in prison now – the mother of her grandchildren.

'There was no written proof that she had tried to reclaim the vase. She had never written to me or got a solicitor involved. She hadn’t even insured it.’

Judge Llewellyn ruled that the vase had not been abandoned by Mrs Galloway and that she still retained ownership. He stated that while it had been at Andrea’s home for almost two decades, she had not given enough thought to its origins.

He added that he appreciated the ruling was a ‘disaster’ for Andrea, ‘who thought that the sun had shined on her life for once’.

Following the ruling, Mrs Galloway said: ‘The whole thing has been appalling. It has taken us two years to get to this stage. We could not stand by and let Andrea walk away with all that money. It is an awful lot and we had no idea the vase was worth that amount.’

Meanwhile, Andrea is trying to focus on minimising the impact on Sophie, now 19, and Phoebe, 14.  Oliver, 25, is now a doctor. ‘They’ve been trying to stay out of it but obviously that’s been very difficult,’ she says.

‘I just feel so sad for them. It doesn’t seem right that while their grandmother has all this money, their mother is facing ruin. All selling that vase did was make their lives harder – that’s what I regret.’

Last night, Steven Galloway told The Mail on Sunday: ‘My primary concern is for preserving the dignity of my two children as much as possible, so all I will say is that my mother and I are relieved the case is over, but we take no pleasure in any of this.’