Knebworth Antiques Roadshow

Welcome back to Knebworth House in Hertfordshire. This grand residence,

home of the Lytton family for 500 years, is 30 miles north of London,

so it would be quite handy for commuting to the capital.

Beneath its romantic confection of 19th-century stucco lies a solid Elizabethan manor house.

This is the banqueting hall, which highlights many of the themes of Knebworth.

It's said to be one of the finest rooms in England, with its oak screen

and its minstrel gallery.

And on the ceiling, the oak decoration dates to about 1600.

Portraits always bring a room to life and there are some first-rate examples here -

Sir Robert Lytton, the first owner of Knebworth, gazes sternly out.

And here, a very fine likeness of Sir Philip Sidney by Jan de Critz. A few centuries later,

Winston Churchill regularly visited the second Earl and his wife Pamela.

Churchill was himself a successful painter,

and this is his 1930s version of the banqueting hall -

very little has changed since then.

In 1850, it even served as a theatre when Charles Dickens and his amateur troupe sang for their supper.

Around the ceiling is carved a sort of family motto -

"Worth in all, wit in some, laughter open, slander dumb."

Those lofty sentiments expressed by Edward Bulwer Lytton came to have an ironic ring to them.

Bulwer Lytton was an extraordinary man - a politician and a writer,

he had a colourful personal life.

Details of that later, from our expert Clive Farahar.

First, some exchanges from previous roadshows. We start in Selby, in Yorkshire.

Both my parents were pharmacists and they had a chemist's shop in London where they had the mortars.

-They had them on display?

-This one,

cos my mother said anybody who could lift it and run was welcome to it.

That's a good pitch! Unusual that both your parents were pharmacists.

Was your mother an early pharmacist in the business?

She was, yes. She was the first pharmacist at Allen and Hanbury's at Ware.

Interesting that they had all three, as they're a spread of varieties.

This one in cast brass is dated 1576,

but I'm sorry to tell you it doesn't actually come from that period.

It was probably made in the 20th century

and would have a value, I suppose,

of about, um...£30 or £40 only.

The one on the far side is older,

probably dating from the early part of the 18th century.

Nice to have it with the pestle.

But the prize of the piece is this large fellow,

which is in bell metal - which is a good period material -

and if we revolve it, you can see it's got, on the top band,

the maker's name - Jan Van Boydbergen,

who was probably operating in Rotterdam in the 16th century...

and as we progress in our circular tour, you see the date 1573.

So it's from that period, and from that point of view quite rare.

Nice band of swagging round the middle

and underneath, this affair of amarini,

these children holding hands,

cast in as a decorative technique.

This one is of a good size. It's a nice colour.

Er...it's a mortar that, if you were selling it,

-you would probably get between £3,000 and £5,000.

-Oh, right.

-My husband came across it about three years ago in Kent.

-Yes.

And he gave it to me.

-What did you feel?

-I laughed,

and I said it was the first time I'd been given a loo for a present.

And he says, "Put a plant pot in it, you know, just stick it in a corner."

It indicates, as we've done here,

that these were fitted pieces of furniture, completely boxed in,

and all the works, which is underneath, were completely hidden from view.

You used it, the seat was all one sort of built-in piece,

and when you'd finished your business,

there was a lever here that you simply pulled.

As we shall see if we take the seat off...

the lever operated a complicated system of plumbing,

so that in pulling the lever,

the trap opened and it was simply a gravity drop.

What is unusual is that it's all here.

The date of this is probably 1840 to 1860, and we can do that

simply from the transfer printing on the bowl. It's in a darker blue.

Sometimes, of course, when they were designed to be free-standing,

you get patterns on the outside too.

Personally, I'd try to reinstall it.

If it wasn't the only loo in the house, it would be a great eccentric loo for occasional use.

I'm just having a house built, with two bathrooms.

Show it to your plumber. It can be made to work.

Somebody doing up a house might pay £1,500-£2,000 to have it working.

In this condition, you're probably looking at £300 to £400, but still a jolly good present.

-Thank you very much.

-Thank you.

I seem to remember many years ago that it had a very pleasant smell,

so I assumed it was a perfume box.

You're right - it's a vinaigrette, and what's inside is the grille

under which, originally, there would have been a little sponge soaked in perfume.

-People didn't wash.

-Oh, dear!

And when things got a bit bad,

out came your vinaigrette and you took a little whiff,

to overcome the stench of unwashed humanity.

How did you come by it?

It's just been literally in a drawer for years and years doing nothing.

OK. It's interesting we've got the maker's mark - NM.

Now, that's a very interesting maker - that's Nathaniel Mills,

who is THE Birmingham box maker everybody wants.

Always with these, you get the marks spread between the two sections,

so you get some on the top and some in the body,

-and tucked in there we've actually got the date letter.

-Oh.

-For 1851.

They have become very collectable,

-particularly Nathaniel Mills and particularly those that have scenes on the top.

-Yes.

The value does depend a great deal on the scene.

So some scenes are quite common, others are more difficult to find. St Paul's is a difficult one,

and that would be much sought-after by a collector.

-So, have you thought about value?

-No, I haven't.

Right. I think here we're looking at somewhere in the region of £800.

A very pleasant surprise.

It's been in the office where I work since about the turn of the century.

Oh, it's in an office. I think it dates from a bit earlier than that -

more like the 1870s,

given the slightly architectural quality there.

But its pedestal is really rather heavier than one would imagine

for a pretty oval mahogany top like this.

I think the weight of the pedestal

belies the secret of this table.

-Because it's a metamorphic table, isn't it?

-Yes.

-Show me what it does.

I think that's really smart. You've got a very decorative oval table

which expands into a dumb waiter.

What's interesting is that I don't think you often see an oval one -

you frequently see rectangular ones, particularly from the early 19th century, with standard ends,

but this, with its decorative base and oval shape, is more unusual.

I think one with the decorative qualities of these but also combined with the solidity

will be worth a bit more, so an auction value

-would be around £2,200, something like that.

-More than I thought.

-I'll have to stop storing the old invoices on it.

-Yes, you should!

Ah, Clive - has Knebworth yielded up some interesting papers?

One that struck me - which there is a copy of,

up in the Elizabethan room, from the Public Record Office -

shows conclusively that Queen Elizabeth did stay here,

and that document wasn't found until quite recently.

I find this collection exciting -

letters from Charles Dickens to Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton.

He starts off, as you can see, quite formally - "My dear Sir Edward" -

but his friendship goes right on through here until we get to about the 1850s, when he says,

"My dear Bulwer Lytton" and indeed "My dear Bulwer", in the later ones.

But it's a wonderful correspondence, the younger novelist taking advice,

with a wonderful story about Dickens handing Bulwer Lytton the proofs of Great Expectations.

Yes, we saw the original recently in Wisbech in Cambridgeshire. Did Bulwer Lytton have any influence?

Here he did, because he suggested a softer ending to Dickens -

that Pip and Estella get back together - and of course they do in the published edition,

so he obviously had some influence.

But there is a note at the beginning

on Charles Dickens - a critique -

but I think it says more about Bulwer Lytton than about Dickens.

"He has been fortunate in escaping the envy of fellow writers,

"and has aided this good fortune by very skilful care of his own fame, watching every occasion

"to refresh it when it has seemed to fade a little."

I'm not sure Dickens' fame DID fade.

-I think that shows a touch of envy.

-Yes, a bit sharp.

What an absolutely splendid Royal Worcester vase.

It's a terribly rare object. It's in the Japanesque style, of course,

with these strange handles and this turreted top to it.

It looks like a Grecian urn for ashes or something like that. Never been used for such a thing, has it?

We believe it has been, but not in our knowledge of it.

-No, not Uncle Charlie!

-No.

-He's not in there now?

No, and anyway I've washed it out!

But it's absolutely beautiful, isn't it? What's its history?

It was left to me by my uncle. He died last year.

-I think it came from his wife's family.

-Yes, what are we in date?

We're, er...we're letter P - 1879.

The marvellous decoration on both sides is outstandingly wonderful.

What is very nice is that you've got combinations of gold and platinum - platinum resembling silver.

You can't use real silver on this because it would tarnish in the kiln, so platinum was used instead,

and you've got bronze as well.

Three wonderful colours, gorgeous gilding - exotic butterflies and Japanese prunus blossom,

and on this side there's these fantastical flying cranes.

They're crazy kamikaze cranes, which are sort of doing...zooming about, and all this spotted gold -

very, very much in the style of Japanese,

but, of course, Worcester has taken it over and made it its own self.

The decoration is probably by James Callahill.

This was his speciality - these raised cranes. It's marvellous.

It's in good condition - slight little nibbles in the gold,

but it's not bad at all, is it, really?

I suppose it would go to someone perhaps in Australia or America.

The great vogue for this is abroad.

I imagine it going at auction to either of those countries

for something like about £3,000 to £3,500.

I was a Sister at the Royal London Hospital,

-and I wore this uniform.

-This exact uniform?

I wore one exactly like that.

It looks like a 19th century design of costume.

Yes, over the years it's been modified and redesigned.

We were literally held together with pins.

Yes, it's true, because of washing, going to the laundry. We had real mother-of-pearl buttons.

-So, these buttons here were mother-of-pearl?

-Pearl.

-Held in by pins?

-Held in by pins.

The collar was held on by pins.

When we were on duty, the sleeves detached from here,

and you undid the cuffs and you took the sleeve off.

It's a wonderful story about the uniform - this marvellous story that you actually wore this.

-That makes it very special to you.

-It does indeed.

It is, in fact, a special object in its own right. It's a limited edition.

Only 500 were made.

Now with limited editions,

not just Royal Worcester ones, the value tends to go down.

-Really?

-This is because they are often sold at high prices to begin with

and there's quite a lot of them,

and there simply isn't the demand, so they fall in price,

but this is an exception.

It is such a charming one that most of them were bought,

like you, by members...the Sisters, and the doctors and the staff,

so they rarely come on the market.

Today, this, with its certificate and its box, if it came up at auction,

-would make £1,000 to £1,250.

-Really?

-And it's still going up.

It's rather precious to me, this.

It reminds me of my youth!

You used to undress Field Marshal Montgomery?

I'm sure not many people have had that pleasure!

His head is made out of a composition.

He looks like the smiling chap that everybody thought he was from the photographs.

What I like about him is, firstly, he's in reasonably good condition,

which is amazing since he went through your childhood,

but also he's got his telltale thumbs-up.

He's not terribly valuable, probably in the £200, maybe £300, bracket,

but he tells a story and that's actually the most important thing of all.

It's captured all the excitement of lustreware and I think it's great.

-So how much is it worth?

-I haven't a clue.

-What do you think?

-Gosh! Well, anything between £5 and £5,000.

-That's all right!

-Well, about £400 to £500.

-Really?

-Oh!

"That's the way to do it"!

-That nearly gave me a heart attack.

-Oh, I'm sorry!

It's from a house sale. The gentleman owned a furniture shop in Lytham.

It was just there and I liked it.

I didn't like the house, but I liked the furniture, so I asked the lady if she wanted to sell any pieces.

-So, it was quite by chance that...?

-Totally by chance.

-How interesting!

Well, there is the Gillows stamp and usually... certainly by the sort of date...

Yes, here you've got the very characteristic Gillows construction,

putting a slot behind the screw,

so that the bottom of the drawer can expand and contract without pulling the drawer apart.

-Oh, right.

-It's one of the problems with this sort of construction.

The problem with the style that I have is that the lower part of this piece

LOOKS like something from the early part of the 18th century.

-It's got nice cabriole legs with claw-and-ball foot.

-Right.

-Sort of date of this style... one would think of, er...1720, something like that.

-Oh.

-Whereas the top part here, now this is much more like a 17th century cabinet.

-Right.

So you've got an early 18th century style base with a 17th century style cabinet,

but here you've got something really sort of jazzy with this coromandel here,

and, interesting, a burr... a pollard oak.

Gillows is a very high quality manufacturer,

and you can see the quality of this.

At the end of the 19th century, the last two decades, they were making furniture in these earlier styles

and I think that accounts for perhaps the slight disparity in the top and the bottom.

-They weren't that bothered about mixing a 17th century element with an early 18th century part.

-Right.

Have you any idea what it's worth?

-Erm, we've had it valued for £1,000 on the insurance.

-£1,000?

For insurance? I think you could up that

to make it around £5,000 as an auction estimate.

It might well go higher than that and with the potential in the future

for going even higher, because it's a classy piece.

-You did extremely well to forget the house and get the furniture.

-Yes!

What kind of life did Bulwer Lytton have? How did he become a writer?

Well, he led the life of a Regency dandy. He dressed flamboyantly.

He had the most extraordinary hairstyle and whiskers.

He was in society, knew everybody.

He was reputed to have had an affair with Lady Caroline Lamb.

Obviously he knew Byron, Thackeray and Dickens, those sorts of people.

He was moving in the best society.

He met a young lady - a young Irish lady called Rosina Wheeler -

and she he fell in love with.

She had no money. He wanted to marry her.

His mother said no - very strong woman, his mother.

So he married her, of course, and she cut him off without a penny.

He decided to make a living out of writing and going into politics.

But did he have talent as a writer?

Oh, he had an enormous talent as a writer. He wrote over 70 books.

He combined the Titanic energy of a Churchill...with politics,

but he was more like a Jeffrey Archer, I suppose, as a popular political novelist.

And life with Rosina? Were they happy here?

After all that, sadly, they didn't live here, she never lived here,

and theirs was to be one of the most tempestuous, most grotesquely tempestuous marriages

of the 19th century.

Now, I like this box. Let's see what's inside it.

-Oh, it flies out to meet you.

-Yes.

It's the most marvellous Russian case in the old Russian taste.

What do you know about this fellow?

-He was... Was he a tsar?

-Well, he could be a tsar.

He's really an old Russian warrior, a boyar, an aristocratic warrior.

A fantastically flowing beard here,

-set with what we call cabochon cut stones.

-Yes.

-Did you know they're rubies and sapphires?

-No.

-Well, they are!

That's called a chrysoprase.

It's a semi-precious material - chrysoprase -

doing the job of an emerald there, but to huge effect, isn't it?

There was a huge revival in Russia in the late 19th century for all things old Russian.

The Romanovs were getting a little bit twitchy about their ancestry.

This is perfectly typical and a rather dramatic example.

-Tell me its history. We've a bit on the back.

-I can't tell you much.

-I think Captain Dawson was my mother-in-law's father.

-Right.

-It says here, "To Captain Dawson," doesn't it?

-Yes.

And then, "From the Russian officers, 1906."

-Tell me why.

-I can't tell you much.

I think he was on convoys or something like that and, er...

-And this was a nice present from them.

-Yes.

In Russia, you'd expect the most sumptuous ones.

Russia was an enormously wealthy country at this time and lavish gifts were part of it.

The market's coming up as there's enormous wealth yet again in Russia,

and so I think that this object

should be put down in an insurance policy

for about £2,000.

SHE CHUCKLES

-Thank you.

-Thank YOU very much.

They're so lively. I think they can only have been done on the spot...

-from life.

-I'm sure they're from life.

Do you think he was purely an amateur who did these?

He IS an amateur, but a good one.

I say that because of this slight awkwardness that's not professional.

That gives them all the more life.

This is General Ramsay, who was at the Battle of Waterloo, I believe.

-Here's these wonderful whiskers on this man.

-Yes.

-This is Sir Lytton Bulwer.

-Bulwer, the writer.

-He was a well-known writer.

Yes, it's a marvellous head of hair he's got there, and this lovely tall hat.

That's great. I always thought it was Bulwer Lytton.

Certainly by the 19th century, the late 19th century, there was a Bulwer Lytton around.

The last one, which I think is wonderful, is this elderly fellow,

who's being helped by a footman, presumably to get into a cab.

Yes, the Earl of Westmoreland, and that was about a year before he died.

-I think he was about 90 at the time, but...

-Yes.

I see how spindly his legs are.

On the back, some other person has written, "Known as Old Rapid".

-Old Rapid!

-Most extraordinary.

We'd call him "Speedy Gonzalez" now.

It's a lovely book. It has this amazing freshness as if one was a witness to the 1820s -

a direct window onto them.

-About £200-£250, that sort of thing.

-I see. Right.

-Yeah.

-Yes, fine.

-But a wonderful record.

-Excellent.

-A most enjoyable find.

I've never seen a pair of figures like this before in my life.

I mean, they're quite exceptional.

They are pretty definitely French, I would say.

No markings on the bottom.

They're a terracotta body, which has been what we call "cold painted" -

that is not fired colours, but cold colours.

They were made at a time - we're looking at the 1860s, 1870s -

when...it was just...

You couldn't refer to a "leg" of anything.

The Victorians had to drape the table to cover the legs up because they were rude.

If you talked about the table leg,

it was an "unmentionable", which is ridiculous.

Yet here are two figures of ladies,

if that's what they are, exposing themselves.

-I think these were made for a brothel.

-Oh!

I think they were made for a French brothel.

I can't think of anywhere else. You could never have these in polite society at all.

They're spill vases.

They probably stood on a mantelpiece in a brothel,

surrounded by all the whores in their wonderful dishabille, you know, undress.

The gentleman could light his cigar from the spill vase.

They're great fun. Where did you get them from?

At an antique fair ten years ago, but they couldn't tell me about them.

-How much did you pay for them?

-I think it was about £70 the pair.

-I think £70 was a good buy.

They're such a wacky pair of figures that somebody with a sense of humour

-would pay £300 to £400 for them.

-Gosh!

-You did very well.

The thing I like best, and this is local to Wisbech, and I've never seen it before,

is you've come so well prepared with your own chain.

And this is real local interest, isn't it? It does worry me.

-Do the inhabitants of Wisbech need instructions on everything?

-Yes.

Because it says "pull"...

As distinct from "push"!

-We were out shopping one day in Stamford...

-Yeah.

We went into this antique shop

-and that was when we bought it.

-And how long ago was that?

At the very beginning of the war.

You've obviously got a good eye.

-Although fairly conventional in its form, it's got some very unusual features.

-Yes.

The most striking thing about it is the veneers.

-Looking at the veneers...

-Yes.

-..the panels on the doors and the drawer,

-it's a wonderful figured mahogany, known as a blister figure.

-Yes.

It looks a bit like crocodile skin. It's quite an unusual figure.

-Down here... we've got a row of drawers and the same the other side.

-Yes.

Super condition there and super colour.

And then...above, we've got this marvellous secretaire drawer.

If we just open that up, it's a super interior -

quite plain, but very nicely fitted.

-Again, we've this lovely blistered veneer on the drawers.

-Yes.

The drawers themselves are nicely made, mahogany linings throughout,

super quality, really.

It's late Georgian or perhaps very early Victorian, perhaps about 1820, 1830.

-Yes.

-And if we can just close this up again...

..this style of panelling, particularly these handles,

-are absolutely characteristic Regency.

-Are they?

I think if I were to see this, er... in a good quality antique shop,

I would be expecting to pay about £8,500, something like that.

Well, my grandfather moved to the area from London, about 1920,

so that's when they would have come from London to Wisbech.

From the way they're inscribed on the slips around them, they're by Alfred Augustus Glendenning.

What's nice is that Glendenning is a quintessentially British painter.

He does the English landscape very well in the Constable tradition.

He's always conscious of the weather and cloud formations, and his detail is very tight.

He has a very good understanding of light on the landscape.

By playing with effects of light from the foreground through the middle to the background

and the blue hills in the far distance, he gets a good sense of perspective.

You get a feel of the sweep of the landscape and the scale of it.

Everything seems to sit in exactly the right place.

He's very accomplished, especially at this later stage of his career.

-Have you had these pictures valued?

-My grandmother had them valued about 1978.

-At the time they said they were worth more together, valued together.

-That's true.

-The value was greater with them together.

-They're a very nice pair.

-It was £1,000 for both of them.

-£1,000? Right.

Well, things have changed, and these pictures now I think are worth

-between £15,000 and £20,000.

-Are they really?

-Yes.

-Right.

Michael, may I introduce you to Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton?

And here is a picture by EM Ward,

painted in 1854, which reflects him in his smoking jacket,

-and that lovely bright tablecloth, I am assured, is this one.

-Charming.

This tempestuous marriage - did they never get together again?

Oh, there were notorious reconciliations.

The first was in 1833. They decided to spend the winter abroad, but Bulwer Lytton, being the man he was,

decided to take his mistress along, and her husband,

and poor old Rosina - when they got to Italy - consoled herself in the arms of a Neopolitan prince.

-Didn't Edward find out?

-He found out about it all right, and he beat her,

and insisted they go back to England immediately. On another occasion,

he actually tried to stab her with a carving knife and then he bit her cheek and so they separated,

and the final time that we know about

is when she invited him for a reconciliation dinner and he sent a note saying that he couldn't come,

because he was ill, and so what does a dutiful wife do?

She goes up to his apartment at The Albany in Piccadilly, and finds him dallying with a scantily clad whore.

It's the most extraordinary thing. At this point, they get their deed of separation.

But did she write about him?

She'd been tormenting him for years. Every time he put out a novel,

she put out another one lampooning HIS novel. Her novels are much rarer than Edward Bulwer Lytton's novels.

She was a proto-feminist, of course, you could say, and any of her books today would certainly be worth

-more than his.

-What did all this do to his career?

Sex, power and politics all went together quite well and it did him no harm at all.

He actually became Secretary of State for the Colonies.

He appeared on the hustings in Hertford. Rosina was in Taunton,

and she came up and gave notice that she was going to speak as well,

and she starts off the speech - with loads of people there -

"Men of Herts, if you have hearts of men, listen to me."

She then lists all his wrongs and all the nasty things he's done to her - the incident with the knife,

and all that, and she ends up, "Why is this man head of the Colonies,

-"when he should have been in the Colonies as a transportee?"

-Which drove him insane.

It drove him insane with madness

and here - this is his own account, in his own hand, of her and this particular meeting.

"In the middle of a rabble before the hustings, an elderly woman..." - they were the same age -

"in a white dress, with a parasol, her face daubed with a coarse paint,

"her eyebrows strongly blackened,

"gesticulating and gibbering - and that woman was my wife and the mother of my son,

"who was ready to disappear into the earth with shame."

So what did he actually do next?

He tried to have her committed and he sent a doctor down to Taunton,

and HE said he'd never met a saner woman.

But Bulwer Lytton did get her.

-He hired two other doctors who had her put away in an asylum.

-But surely he didn't get away with that?

The Somerset County Gazette spread the story across their pages,

and of course the London newspapers decided it was open game season,

and shot him from all sides. Queen Victoria was dragged into this

and she decided to intervene through Lord Derby, her Prime Minister,

and after 28 days Rosina was released.

What a delightful pair of pictures.

-Like well-behaved children, you can take them anywhere.

-Yes.

What I particularly like about them, they're by quite an interesting artist called William Lee Hankey,

who...studied in Chester,

was born in 1869 and died in 1952.

He's seen the world, Lee Hankey - he's been to France and Holland -

-and there's a melting pot of influences here.

-Yes.

I love the sort of Impressionist style of them.

-Have you had them for ages?

-They were given to my mother early '20s...

-No, late '20s, probably early '30s.

-Right.

-So I've grown up with them.

-They're scenes in Brittany, aren't they?

-I think so.

And one of them has been dedicated here to...Miss Fanny Newman?

-They were given to my mother by a gentleman called Alfred Newman.

-Ah.

-I wouldn't think that they're worth an awful lot.

-Well, I think they are,

because they're just what people like to see.

-English Impressionism, that's what they are.

-Yes.

-I'd say they are worth, each, £2,000 to £3,000.

-Oh.

For many, the house is the memory of coming to Knebworth,

but for me the memory is the first concert that I came to here in 1974.

This was the very first one with the Allman Brothers, Van Morrison,

the Doobie Brothers, in 1974, and we had about 70,000.

-The next year you had Pink Floyd, I think.

-It was my favourite concert,

because the Dark Side Of The Moon is my all-time favourite rock record.

-I remember they had a huge moon...

-They had a big crane with a wire across the audience,

it came on in the second half just as it was getting dark,

and suddenly this rocket spewing sparks went across into the stage, whoomph, and the fireworks went up,

the whole crowd leapt to their feet

-and the roar - it was a tremendously dramatic moment.

-It was memorable.

And then we've been through this... In 1991 was the big charity event.

Everybody you've ever heard of played there - Eric Clapton, Paul McCartney, Elton John.

It was just amazing - that was 120,000. And then the most recent one was the Oasis concert in 1996.

-Will you do this again?

-We hope so.

We need Britain to produce bands that like playing to 125,000 people.

I probably turned up looking like you do today.

I put the gear on specially for the programme. My Wrangler jeans are genuine antiques now!

Fantastic. Fab! Groovy, perhaps!

It came to me through an aunt of mine,

who was brought up by a maiden aunt of HERS,

who died in 1947, and this was one of the last family treasures she had.

It was written about in this book, which is a collection of short stories by C Henry Warren,

who was a friend of the aunt who had brought them all up and whose last treasure that was.

-He wrote two stories - one about the musical box and another about her ferocious cat called Romulus.

-I see.

Well, what we can say for certain is that this is a Swiss gold snuff box,

and it has a musical mechanism within and it's obviously deeply recessed in the base here,

to accommodate a spindle with pins.

I'm confident it plays a beautiful tune - here's the winding aperture,

-and you probably have the key.

-Yes.

-Look after it, they always get lost.

It's a very distinguished example, made in about 1820.

It's part of the charm to take what were called toys in those days -

they are toys to amuse adults - to take a valuable object out

and to have the added pleasure of music.

Would it ever be used as a snuff box?

I think probably a table snuff box, just about,

but its first function is to amaze us. Have you considered its value?

It was valued about five years ago when I first got it - about £1,800,

-I think, was the valuation then.

-Quite conservative.

-Really?

-Yeah, very collectable, very sought-after.

It's a very quietly distinguished one,

but nonetheless I think a very valuable one - probably £7,500, possibly even £10,000 with luck.

-Ah.

-Ah. Time to play the music, do you think?

-Er, yes, please.

-Soothe our nerves.

-TUNE PLAYS

About seven years ago, I went to an antiques fair with the intention of purchasing a grandfather clock,

and...I didn't purchase such a clock,

-I bought this instead.

-Well...I think it's gorgeous,

and I have to say that this sort of table clock is very special.

I won't say that it's unique,

but it is a very unusual piece,

and the majority of people watching will never have seen another one.

We have the bowl which is made of pewter,

and then it is engraved and these numerals are filled with black wax.

In the middle is a very nice engraved sun,

and there's... Earlier we put water in it and there's a little turtle.

Now, inside this hexagonal base

there is a movement, and a large magnet at the top basically pulls the turtle round.

It's a lovely way to show the time.

He's moving around because we're outdoors and it's windy,

-but indoors he remains stable.

-Yes.

-His head is big but you could still tell the time accurately.

-Yes, you can.

-Let's take that off...

..pop it over there.

And as I mentioned, the hexagonal gilt brass case

and at each...corner here,

a rather nice cast lion,

very much in an earlier style. What sort of date did you think this was?

Approximately... 100 to 150 years old.

-So the chap who sold it to you said it was about the 1860s?

-Exactly.

OK, we'll open this pretty little door here...

and revealed under there is a small drum movement

with a lever escapement

signed by Planchon of Paris.

Then over there, the slight giveaway is the stamp - made in France -

which indicates to me that it's after about 1905.

By 1906 the country of origin had to be declared.

We've got these lovely butterfly nuts that are all spring-loaded...

..and I will withdraw the clock movement out of the case.

And there we go.

The lever platform is there and is obviously wound through the base,

and on the top we have a silver chapter ring and the magnet,

which is circular except for a small notch there.

And it is that bit that attracts the turtle.

It is a lovely, very unusual thing.

Can I ask you what you paid for it?

It was approximately £1,700,

-which was a lot of money.

-Yes, but you'll be delighted to hear that it's gone up significantly.

-The longcase clock you wanted to buy would have gone up as well, because clocks are strong just now.

-Yes.

If I was retailing this today -

it is a very unusual object and only the second good quality one I've seen in ten years -

this one would retail

-for at least £4,500, if not £5,000.

-Terrific.

-You won't see another.

You really won't.

I've been at fairs and working in the auction room for years and to find this - very scarce.

There is another literary connection with Knebworth and another more gentle love story.

Winston Churchill met Pamela Plowden in India, where she was brought up,

and she became his first great love.

They remained friends and when she married Victor, 2nd Earl of Lytton,

Winston became a regular visitor. Pamela had known Winston so long

she could be honest. In 1901, she wrote to a friend, "Dearest Connie, he is not famous to me.

"I have known him so long,

"and the parts I am fond of are those he least cultivates for the success of the life he prefers."

And that's it. Until next week, goodbye.

Subtitles by BBC