Cliveden Antiques Roadshow

This is Cliveden, near Maidenhead, about 20 miles from London,

close enough - even 300 years ago - to have lunch in Westminster

and then get back home in time for dinner without even a hint of indigestion.

Cliveden has a complicated history,

but it was the second Duke of Buckingham who bought the site in 1666

and created this huge plateau above the Thames.

He is said to have built it for his mistress, the lovely Countess of Shrewsbury.

The Earl of Shrewsbury wasn't too happy with this arrangement and this sword, inlaid into the grass,

commemorates the result - a duel between the two men in 1668.

Rumour has it that the countess held her lover's horse while he killed her husband.

At any rate, she became the mistress of Cliveden as well as the Duke of Buckingham's.

Cliveden is owned by the National Trust, but the house itself is run as a very posh hotel,

and guests are welcomed in high style into the hall,

which displays a great deal of its history.

These tapestries date from the early 18th century when Lord Orkney was in residence.

They depict his valiant military career. About 100 years after they were made, the tapestries vanished.

A century later, Lord Astor - who was by then the owner of Cliveden - bought them at an auction in Paris

without realising he was about to bring them back to their original home.

How they got to France in the first place is a mystery.

The gardens of Cliveden are, as you might expect, magnificent,

and were put to good use by the Prince of Wales, who lived here in the 1730s and '40s.

He and his wife created an alternative court, a centre for politics and the arts.

In the summer of 1740,

they attended a theatrical entertainment here in Cliveden's amphitheatre.

The show ended with a new song called Rule Britannia,

and Their Highnesses enjoyed it so much they demanded a repeat performance the following night.

MUSIC: "Rule Britannia"

Despite its royal connections,

Cliveden's most glorious years were in the 20th century, under the American Astor family -

glorious that is, until scandal struck in 1963 - but more of that next week.

As for today, well, we're hoping the weather will be kind

as the people of Buckinghamshire and Berkshire bring their treasures to show our experts.

My mother had an uncle who was not married and, apparently, had lots of money,

and, er, we just called him "the collector",

-and I think he bought a lot of things at that time.

-Did he travel?

-No, no, no, he bought them all in Glasgow.

-In Glasgow?

That - that's interesting because Glasgow is a great seaport,

-certainly was around the turn of that century, 1900, wasn't it?

-Yeah.

It's very often to seaports that we look when finding out how pieces like this came into the country.

-You know that it's Japanese?

-Yes.

And I'm turning it round to see if I can find a signature and, sure enough, there is the signature.

And it says "Miyao".

Miyao is one of the great bronze founders in Japan at the end of the 19th century.

They produced really high-quality pieces. This is jolly nice.

-It's actually an incense burner.

-Oh, I've always thought of it as being a flower pot.

-Right.

That's what I was thinking you might say you were using it for.

The actual surface, the patina, that this was given, is stunningly good.

This is a polished nut-brown face that he has,

wonderfully sculpted hair and then all of the brocade,

medallions on his costume, round the sides... We've got these wonderful polonia leaf mons -

heraldic devices that would possibly refer to a family.

We have flying phoenixes, all the things you'd expect on a rich piece of Japanese fabric,

rendered in this lovely gilt bronze. The colour is gorgeous.

The mistake that people often make

-is they get the bronze polisher and turn it a nice gold colour. That's certainly not what we want here.

-No.

It's quite valuable. I suppose that won't come as a surprise to you?

Er, well, no...

-um, because I have had a valuation in the past.

-When was that?

-About 1982.

-Right.

-And I think they valued it at £1,500.

-Right, that's in '82. So we are 18 years on.

I can see this in a shop window...

with a price tag somewhere in the region of £6,000 to £9,000.

What?

Cor blimey!

-Is that to do with the fact that it's signed?

-Well, certainly a signature always helps a bronze, absolutely.

It was my mother's and she died two years ago.

She was an avid collector and this was her pride and joy.

I hear a hint of an American accent in your voice?

Well I've lived there for a number of years, but I came back when my mother was ill.

-This didn't come from America?

-Oh, no, she had it here in England all those years.

It's a piece of furniture - it's quite typical of things made either in the Borders or in Scotland,

and the reason I just asked if it had come from America is that it's also not unlike Federal furniture

dating from the early part of the 19th century,

and there were cabinet-makers in New York, like Duncan Fife,

-who came from Scotland and then set up in New York.

-What a coincidence!

So that is why I was intrigued.

This certainly has all the evidence of being a Scottish piece.

The rather - if I may put it this way - excessive use of marquetry on quite a simple form,

so you've got a very plain but well-figured piece of mahogany

with an elegant oval there,

then they've added quite substantial spandrels in the corner...

and then you've got very pretty marquetry going along the front,

all this in satinwood.

Looking at the drawer fronts, which show up very clearly in the sun,

you can see that it's had other handles, so these are replacement handles,

which is something that often happens with furniture of this period,

probably about the 1790s.

The front is supported at either end on lopers like that, so I'll pull this one out -

do pull that one out as well and then it's safer.

One of the nicest features of this is the interior.

You've got a lovely red mahogany in here where it's been protected from the sun.

You've got the original lock there which is very nice,

and then this beautiful nest of compartments at the back,

a drawer here with an oval which picks up the motif on the front,

and this opens and probably has a drawer? Yes, a little drawer inside.

Does this have any secret compartments or anything like that?

They all seem to be not so secret.

-Everything opens up.

-There's a little drawer here which pulls out.

-I didn't know about that.

-Which is lovely. There's one to keep stamps in.

That is secret.

-A lovely thing and a very nice shape.

-These too, I think, open up.

This pulls up so you've got drawers in the top as well.

-If it's something you inherited from your mother, do you have idea of value?

-No, no.

It needs a little bit of work but it's certainly something that should be insured for £3,000.

-You can take it home and put all your papers back in it.

-Put back all the unpaid bills.

"Presented to CR Cleveland by His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, February 1906."

-Who was Mr Cleveland?

-He was my grandfather.

The then Prince of Wales used to stay with my grandfather

who was the head of the Indian Secret Service,

and he had a house in Simla...

and my grandfather was a great tiger shot,

and the then Prince of Wales used to stay at my grandfather's house and go shooting with my grandfather.

And after one particularly good season,

the Prince of Wales then presented that to my grandfather as a thank-you.

That then Prince of Wales was to become King George...

George V.

We've got this tiny little monogram with the G. It's been so well kept,

that it's in the fitted box and that makes all the difference.

Inside there, you've got this crown and this "TM Martin & Company"

and then this "Henry Capt" at the bottom there, so these are quality court jewellers.

Let's have a look at the brooch. Painted rock crystal from behind.

You get a piece of rock crystal, engrave out the back and you paint in, in this case with red paint,

the letter G - monogram for George.

Blue - you've got a blue enamel ring around there,

tiny little, tiny garter motif,

and then tiny diamonds that form the scroll pieces,

and then the crown - small motif at the top - and all mounted on a gold bar.

So very much the sort of piece that would have been worn really fairly high up at the neck,

and it's not of huge value,

because it hasn't got a great big whopping diamond in it,

but it's got all the ingredients, for a very bijou pedigree piece.

If was sold in a sale - I'm sure you won't sell it - but if it ever were to appear in an auction house,

I would think with the background probably £800 for it, maybe, and so a good little piece,

-small piece, perfectly proportioned.

-Lovely, thank you very much, thank you.

This is a very romantic Victorian watercolour,

the artist is E Wake Cook -

a late Victorian watercolourist.

The subject, I think, is Elaine.

Her story is that she was a lady at the court of King Arthur and she fell in love with Sir Lancelot,

the bravest of all the knights, and she died for love of Lancelot,

so here she's shown in her sort of funeral bier floating down the river past Camelot.

A sad story, but romantic story, a great favourite of the Pre-Raphaelites

and a watercolour like this, even though Wake Cook is not very well known today,

would certainly...that would make £2,000 or £3,000 in a sale.

-Mmm.

-You ought to insure it for more.

-Such detail.

Particularly around the head there.

-Alexandra Palace, we worked together.

-Under the tower.

And there you can see a few people that we worked with, Bob Dougall who ran the whole of the newsreaders.

-Richard Baker, Dickie.

-Yup.

-And an Australian guy Barry McQueen and the lovely me on the end.

With a glass in your hand.

Strange - that can't be me!

I understand it's a brandy warmer.

There's always an interest in it being a brandy warmer.

Often this is the name given to them, but I'm not convinced.

There are so many of these saucepans from the 18th century

that I think one needs to think of it more in terms of a sauce,

which sometimes, I'm sure, was a brandy sauce.

We've got the London date letter there,

the F for 1721 and the NA there - that's a chap called Bowles Nash.

-There is something that worries me a bit about this and that's the way that lip has been done.

-Right.

I'm not convinced that is original.

-I think it originally just went straight round at the top.

-Oh, I see.

And somebody to make it perhaps pour a bit easier has pushed that out.

But even I think with that problem, we'd be looking at about £600 to £700.

Really? Oh!

So clearly the top and bottom don't belong.

I think I agree with that.

That's a George II sort of edge.

But when you look under here...

-It's easy, there's no similarity of colour or age there.

-I didn't know that, I didn't know.

But this blocking's interesting. It suggests it might have had a marble top.

Let's have a look at it. What do you know about these?

-Only that my father bought it and it had five leaves originally.

-Uh-huh.

It enlarged to a large long table, probably soon after World War One.

Four of them were missing ages ago, I think lost in various removals

and one is, I regret to say, missing now. I lent it to an art gallery

and they just displayed it like this, with a semicircular end.

-Right, right.

-And they've mislaid the centre leaf.

-Which would annoy you.

-Very much!

I've written a lot of rude letters. And I searched the basement with them and we couldn't find it, so...

I'm not sure it matters too much. It may be not the worst news in the world.

Shall we have a look at the frieze?

These are straight out of the Robert and James Adam book of the 1770s, The Works In Architecture.

-This certainly is.

-That's where it got the name Adam table.

But is it right, Martin? I love the fact that it's applied carving, fine carving.

There's a lot of decoration

The protrusion here almost suggests it may have had a marble top, it comes a long way forward.

Although you said it's fine carving, to me there's a bit of naivety

about these and often these Italian itinerant carvers - some are good and some weren't so good - but...

But what is interesting, it's so thick this,

especially this mask on the top of the leg, that is not an applied later Victorian thing.

The fact it stands out so proud means that it probably had quite a thick chunky top.

They're very grand tables.

-And, as they are, with later wooden tops...

-Mmm...

-..One would expect an estimate at auction of £10,000-£15,000.

-I'm surprised.

-They're very interesting tables and very beautiful tables.

-Yes.

We both enjoyed looking at them.

I have a feeling the estimate would be exceeded when somebody's found exactly where they were made for.

We found it in a cloakroom cupboard when we cleared my aunt's house out. I know absolutely nothing about it.

I'd seen a picture of one rather similar in a magazine some years ago.

I just wanted to know a bit more about it.

-Well, it's a piece of Italian maiolica.

-Yes.

-It's quite rare.

We don't see these on the programme much at all and it's quite early.

-This is dateable to the first half of the 18th century.

-Gosh.

-It's a classical subject, painted in what is really a Baroque Classical style.

-Mmm.

And made in central Italy in a place called Castelli.

-It's probably from the workshops of a family called the Grue family. G-R-U-E...

-Yes.

And they produced a lot of this, especially with these putti - these are called putti - up the side here.

-Yes.

-All these little chaps here among foliage.

And value - probably around about, maybe £200-£300 in this condition.

-Oh, right. Well, that's good.

-All right?

-Yes, I'll keep it, then.

-Have you been to Osborne House?

-No.

Well, if you went to Osborne House which was where Queen Victoria lived her early life with Albert,

on the Isle of Wight, they have little marble carvings of the limbs, the hands, the arms,

of most of her children,

and there they are sitting on little velvet cushions,

and you can see the sentimental reaction to children at the time.

This is similar. Whose foot is it?

-Horatio Westmacott.

-Gosh, there's a name!

-My grandfather's grandfather,

and his father was Sir Richard Westmacott who I believe was a sculptor.

He's a very well-known British sculptor of the early 19th century,

a key figure in the development of this sort of naturalism,

and, here he is, doing exactly that with his own son.

Generations of your family have stroked it and polished it. It's a lovely thing.

Westmacott is a top-flight sculptor, things by him don't come on the market very often,

I haven't seen a piece of Westmacott before that I could actually handle,

so I would say £1,500 to £2,000 for insurance.

-Oh, good.

-Paul, I know you're also very good at this sort of thing.

It's The Eagle Slayer and it was a sculpture modelled by John Bell

which was shown in the Great Exhibition of 1851 which was made in cast iron and also in bronze.

What date would you think it is?

I'd have thought it was about 1860, that's what I'd have...

That's fine, because in that case it follows the John Bell figure. I'm sure he didn't model this,

but it must be taken from the same source or the same idea.

Sadly, it's been stitched up. In good condition that would be a real Parian collector's delight.

£800 at least, because it's such a rare subject.

Now I've got an 1804 inscription on here which seems to be in a Scandinavian language.

My Scandinavian languages are nonexistent - can you tell me about it?

I think it comes from Denmark, because my family lives on an island near the Danish border.

And my late mother gave it to me

and told me this vase comes from my great-great-great-great-grandfather

-who was a whaling captain.

-Ah.

-And he...

-Of course.

"Captain" in the inscription.

Yes, and the family story is that he got this as a bonus

as he came home from a trip, filled with gold coins as part of his payment,

I don't know if it's true or not.

-That would have been quite a bonus.

-Yeah, I think so.

-He must have had a very successful trip.

-I guess so.

-In fact, it's not a vase, it's a beaker.

-It's a drinking vessel.

-Oh, yeah.

And the form is typically Scandinavian,

and the origin of it is getting the end of an ox horn,

-and if you imagine the ox horn...

-Ah.

-Chopping the end off, that's how you end up with that shape.

And you find them in Denmark, in Sweden, and so on, all of that sort of area.

Now, in this case,

-the mark there is actually from a place called Kristianstad in Sweden.

-Yes.

-And it's significantly earlier than the date of the presentation.

-I see.

So you've got 1804 presentation, but that's actually from 1751.

-1751?

-Right.

The maker I can't tell you, without the right Swedish book, but I'm sure he'll be identifiable,

so it's absolutely delightful and just... Imagine that, gosh, full of gold coins.

-No coins left!

-We've still got the gilding inside, which is delightful,

and that's a very old gilding in there, that's a fire gilding, but delightful form, 1750s.

Valuewise, I think you've got to think

-in terms of somewhere between £800 and £1,200.

-I see.

This is a late Victorian picture but it's not set in the Victorian period -

it's set in Regency costume, something that the Victorians very much liked.

It's three men, they're in a pub or an inn, having a drink, looking at a map.

There's a view of a port beyond.

The artist is Stephen Lewin, it's signed here,

"Stephen Lewin 1890".

Now Lewin was a quite well-known late Victorian painter

of this type of historical and narrative picture, but what is the scene going on here?

What is the story?

Well, as I understand it, the picture was called They Found An Island and the man in the middle -

the rough type - is presumably saying he's found something worth trading in the West Indies.

-Yes.

-The financier on the left is thinking of the money.

-Yes.

The captain on the right is thinking how he's going to get there.

-This is a map of the Caribbean.

-Yes.

-Cuba you can see...

-I don't know what he's pointing at.

-Sounds a bit like Treasure Island.

-It could very well be Treasure Island, I think.

-Yes, why not?

This is one of the pubs overlooking the old port of Bristol.

It's beautifully painted. I like the details very much here of their lunch,

or whatever it is they've just had and beef and bottles of wine here.

-The picture's quite dirty.

-Yes.

A bit damaged here, but easily restored and repaired.

So how did it come to you?

Well, I'm not sure whether my great-grandfather

had it painted or whether he saw it and thought it was appropriate to buy,

because he was in the West Indies trade himself.

-So this subject appealed to him?

-Maybe a sort of bogus family history of West Indies respectability.

-I see.

-I don't quite know.

Yes, well, it's a very interesting subject indeed from several points of view,

and this kind of Victorian narrative picture's very popular now. Is it insured?

-No, not specifically, no.

-Yes, well, I think it might surprise you that a picture like this,

-I would think, in a sale, would make at least £20,000.

-Good grief!

-£20,000 to £25,000.

And I would suggest you insure it for £30,000.

I thought this was the sort of picture that was priced by the square foot rather than anything wonderful.

-Well, all pictures are in a way.

-Yeah.

-This is quite a nice big one.

This is a belt of a boxing champion, but the champion is a woman -

-your mother.

-Yes, that's right.

-So what was the act, what did she do?

-Firstly, she was doing mainly ball punching.

she had a ball punch - like boxers use today for hand and eye co-ordination -

and she was not just doing the single one, she used to have triple ones, suspended triple ones,

and double and triple ones from the floor,

and then she did exhibition boxing with my grandfather,

and it got on to the point where they used to invite people from the audience, especially ladies -

-but men too - and she would give them the experience of boxing a lady.

-What a story!

-It's my mother's.

-And did she buy it, or what?

-No, it was her parents'.

-So it's been in your family for a long time?

-Yes.

-Do you know anything about it?

Absolutely nothing about it, nothing.

Let me tell you it's called - it's a tin-glazed plate or as it's often called Delftware,

-not Delft as in Holland, but made in England.

-Right.

-In fact, this is almost certainly made in Liverpool.

-OK.

-The lovely colours we see on it,

-are often referred to as "Fazakerley colours".

-Oh.

And there's a special Fazakerley plate in Liverpool Museum with that combination of colours.

-It's a really great plate, lovely decoration, quite sparse.

-Yes.

-But beautifully executed.

-I like it.

And painted in the glaze, it's not a transfer.

It's hand-painted and every stroke that you made remained in the glaze. Date?

-Well, it's getting on for 250 years old.

-Gosh!

-Yes. Probably 1750-1760.

-Good Lord!

Tin glaze has one serious defect, and if you look round the outside of the plate,

-every little bit of the glaze has come off.

-Yes.

And this is why subsequently things like creamware and pearlware became more popular.

-You're very lucky that your piece has got hardly any damage on it.

-Really?

-I hope you don't put the turkey on it at Christmas or anything?

-No, nothing.

It really is a great display piece. You might be surprised to know,

in auction, it would go for in the region of £800-£1,000 possibly, possibly even a little more.

Good heavens!

This is before women had the vote.

Women boxers are a little controversial today, let alone in 1915, I mean, my goodness me!

But this lovely medallion in the middle here with the lady boxer, it's great.

To put a price on something like this is not easy, because how many lady boxing belts does one see?

-It's one of those things, isn't it?

-As far as I know, it's unique.

-With the story and the information,

and these little shields for the fights that she won,

I can see this going as boxing memorabilia and somebody paying in excess of £1,000 for it.

-Thank you for bringing it in.

-A pleasure.

I hope to hand it on to my eldest son and not sell it, whatever its value.

-The artist is Stanley Spencer.

-Yes.

-And Cookham's just down the road?

-Yes, bottom of the hill.

-And this gentleman?

-My father, yes.

-Yes.

Frank Francis, he was the baker and confectioner in the village.

-So Stanley was a regular...

-Customer, yes.

-Customer, yes.

Very much so, yes. And I remember him coming over one day,

because my father would nip in from the bakehouse to have a nap.

My mother would make him sit in a leather armchair because of all the flour.

He used this as a cartoon in many of his religious paintings.

So your father appears in some of the big pictures?

-So you just thought of Stanley as a family village friend?

-That's right.

And did you ever go to his studio?

-Were you allowed in?

-No, I... His father gave me my first music lessons so I used to go to the house,

but we never went to any studio. I don't know where... He was in a shed at the back, I think, of the house.

He said to my brother,

"When I find that sketch of your father, you shall have it" - he was very generous with his sketches.

-Right.

-But, of course, he never found it,

and Lady Spencer had got it, and the next thing was, a friend of mine said to me,

-"Do you know that your father's picture is being sold up at Sotheby's?"

-Yes.

And I said "No, I didn't." So I told my brother, who had married Sheila,

and he and Sheila went up to Sotheby's and bought it back.

That's wonderful because Stanley Spencer is a special person.

-We look at him differently. Cookham was his place.

-Absolutely.

And the people of Cookham, your father being one of them,

-were the people of these great paintings.

-Yes, that's right...

You always feel that his heart and his spirit was there, he was part of that place.

He is an important artist in British art history of the 20th century.

-Yes.

-He is a great draughtsman.

He's captured - you say tiredness -

I would think of it as... Well, I don't know what his dreams were, but he's sort of very wistful,

-but his mind is somewhere else.

-That's right, yes, definitely.

It didn't take him all that long to do it.

-How long? That would be very interesting.

-Well, I should imagine about 20 minutes to half an hour.

-That's extraordinary, isn't it?

-Yes.

It's that ability to put it down, to get the composition right, to build up all these shades and shadows...

Yes, all the hatching and the double hatching...

Is this your father as you remember him?

Yes, definitely, I can see him now coming in with his vest -

-he only wore a vest in the bakehouse.

-From an art history point of view, it's not just a wonderful drawing,

a real person, but he is in the paintings,

-he is part of the history of the paintings.

-Yes, he is.

And I think...

-£20,000 to £30,000.

-Really?

-I think it's just a marvellous drawing,

and I think, today, if it were a standard Stanley Spencer drawing, I would say £10,000 to £15,000,

but I just feel that this has got that X factor.

Extra personal factor... We didn't do too badly, then, by paying £160 for it in '71.

-No, you didn't, but it was probably quite a stretch then.

-It seemed a lot of money.

"There was an old lady who lived in a shoe who had so many children

"that she didn't know what to do," and there she is.

She's wonderful, and how many children has she got here?

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve,

-thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen - she's been busy!

-She has, yes.

And I have to say that she looks a little world-weary.

She's also got a switch in her hand, no doubt for keeping order

amongst her unruly brood.

-What's the story here?

-She has always been mine, I used to play with her when I was little.

During the 19th century, I had relatives that lived in Singapore so she may come from there.

I'd love to say that she was from Singapore - unfortunately, she's not.

So that is slightly spurious,

but what we do have here is a whole range of little wooden dolls

with articulated arms and legs, perhaps...

-Yes.

-Yes, some with one leg.

And some with more!

-The dolls originated in Germany almost certainly.

-Oh.

-And would've been produced as a sort of novelty.

The shoe itself is modelled on a shoe perhaps from the 1820 period,

but it is much later in date. I think she's probably dating from the 1860s.

She's in very nice condition,

all the little children have got their bonnets and so on, and she's very collectable.

We could be talking about between perhaps...

£700 and £900. So not only is she a nursery rhyme but she's also a fairy tale.

-Rather nice, yes.

-She's lovely.

-Not quite what I thought.

-Oh, good!

We found them in a box that we bought at an auction about 10 years ago,

-a box of bric-a-brac.

-What else was in the box?

-Just general hardware.

Things like jugs and metal pieces for the kitchen, kitchenware, really.

-What did you pay for the whole lot?

-£20.

I've been told they're 18th century, but I'm not sure.

-That's right, in fact we're looking at, with all this beading, about 1780.

-Right.

And, in fact, the maker there,

that's Mary Beadle and William Yately,

who are specialist buckle makers - they're shoe buckles.

What are the beads? What metal is that? It's obviously not silver.

It looks as though it's copper,

-which is why they haven't put them through the assay office. You're looking at about £150.

-Excellent.

Well pleased.

-Where did you get all these from?

-Well, I've been running the tip for about 17 years just over,

and I've got it through the years, chucked away in the tip. I've got salvage rights for whatever comes in.

It belongs to me. This is different pieces, different weeks or months or years, I've found and just collected.

-When you say "running a tip", what does that actually involve?

-We keep it clean and tidy.

We open and shut the gates, we let people know where to put their rubbish,

when to come in, and we make sure everything's run as it should be,

and anything I find belongs to me -

-I pay the council for it.

-So - just to get this right - these are the accumulation of jewellery...

-Mmm.

-And bits and pieces that people have thrown out?

-Yes, I've found them in rubbish.

You have to look in rubbish people wouldn't think about touching - that's where you find the bits.

Well, it's a reflection really that people don't know what they've got.

You've got some things which are not very valuable, costume pieces.

You've got things like little gem rings here

or pieces of silver jewellery which are not very commercially valuable,

-a double clip over here, not very commercially valuable.

-No.

If we start looking at things like this, it becomes more significant, because these are pieces of jade.

Yes, I know...

And these here are what I call pipkin drop earrings.

They're mounted in gold.

They were probably made in around about 1925,

and it's a beautifully matched pair of imperial jade.

There's a chain with it as well.

You've got a marquise shaped ring...

A Chinese jade ring pendant and a Chinese jade bangle,

where the gold in this is practically pure,

-so people have said it's rubbish.

-I did, till my son told me different.

Let's move on. This caught my eye, this little bar brooch here,

which is mounted with a native-cut Sri Lankan sapphire.

A genuine sapphire in a gold bar brooch with diamonds at the end. It's lovely!

I've had that thrown in the cupboard and not bothered about it. I just dug it out to come here.

Do you know what those are?

Fire opals.

No, black opals. And it's the black opals which are far more valuable than the fire opals.

Those are a Mexican sort of bright glowing colour stone, but these are 1910 or 1915. These were on the tip?

Yes, they were in the box.

Well, you see the colour... I mean, look at the sparkle in them.

The opals shimmer - particularly in this light that we've got here.

The opals are with tiny diamonds above, with knife-edge bar settings on a platinum chain.

Look at the colour of the opal ring.

They're a very good intense blue-green colour, but look at the intensity,

the depth of colour, which was made about 1915,

so again someone's taken a look at these and thought they're nothing at all.

Right OK, so...values...

The sapphire bar brooch... I love the warm colour of the sapphire. It's not a modern stone.

It's an old stone, that one, so that sapphire bar brooch is worth around about £300 or £400.

The collection of jade here - these jadeite pipkin drops,

they must be worth in the region of £400.

The jadeite ring of marquise shape here, that's going to be worth at least in the region of £300.

Those are green hard stones, not jade. That's a jade shield-shaped brooch and a rather pale jade drop,

but it means that the complete contents of that box must be worth at least £800 to £1,200.

-Thank you.

-And then the opals...

One of the stones has got a little faint crack in it.

Nevertheless, the main pendant is going to be worth,

-I would think, something in the region of £1,000-£1,500.

-Oh, dear!

It's going up a bit. And then, mindful of the fact that one opal...

Excuse me, can I say something? Find yourself a woman, you can have them. Get off my back!

Well, I'll just carry on...

The opal earrings here must be worth around about £800 to £1,000.

The opal cluster ring with the intense depth of colour,

really fine Australian stone, a really smashing stone that one,

£800 for that one, I should think.

So this set's going to be worth at least in the region of around about £3,000,

so the accumulation of jewellery that's been discarded by people and just been thrown out,

-amounts to something in the realms of...

-That's not all of it!

-Well, what I've got here amounts to something in the region of £4,000-£6000.

-Thank you very much.

-No idea what that RS stands for?

-No. The obvious thing is the maker's name,

but we don't know who the maker is and it could be an inventory name,

so we can't make a decision about that until we've done more research on the chair.

While we've got it upside down, it's rather nice to look at it.

It's unusual to see yew legs so badly wormed, and what happened there? Is that...?

-They've eaten through, have they?

-I think they've eaten it through...

-I think they have.

-I haven't got the foot.

-This is sapwood of yew, so it's very vulnerable to worm.

-Right.

The heartwood is much less so.

That needs looking at and treating.

Let's turn it over and have a look here and see what we've got.

Well, it's a very nice chair.

-Tell me where you got it.

-I got it from my aunt,

who got it from her aunt, who just inherited it from various members of the family.

It started in Pinkneys Green,

which is Maidenhead, so it's of fairly local origin originally, I think.

-It's always been in this area?

-Yes, via Lewisham and Blackheath and...

-So it's been around?

-Well, it's come back.

-I think it's come back home.

-Yes.

-Because we have a chair here from Slough.

-Really?

Yeah. I've got what might be rather an interesting surprise for you.

-Just have a look at that.

-Oh, my goodness! That's not it!

-Is that it?

-Is it?

-It's got to be, hasn't it?

-It's not exactly the same chair but it's clearly of the same school of making.

-Yes.

-There are only two of these recorded with maker's names.

-Really?

-Which is why the RS is confusing me.

There's one by Richard Pitt who died in 1769, another one by John Hewitt who died in 1777.

Both chairs are labelled and they have the information on them,

so that's very rare to have that documented information.

This is a very typical Thames Valley comb-back chair here, again in yew.

This solid bar, double bar splat is in yew as well and are the spindles here and this lovely arm,

beautifully worn and patinated with this very particular support here,

is very typical of the two other chairs that I've just mentioned.

The Pitt chair has four of these spindles underneath the arm here.

-Oh, yes.

-And the Hewitt chair has five of them,

so does that mean that this one is by Pitt because it's four?

We don't know. Is the signature underneath, is that stamp anything to do with the maker?

Or is it some house or village? We don't know yet, but that would be further research.

This is a chair that's sought after everywhere.

You've had it for a long time. I'm going to value it conservatively,

because it's not in good condition, but it is an original 18th century chair of this rare Slough group,

so I'm going to put a value of £10,000.

Really? Good God! I might have to sit down on it now.

Gracious me.

The weather has kept us on our toes today, but it has been worth it.

My favourite item was all that fine jewellery that had been thrown away and might have been lost for ever.

There's been so much at Cliveden we haven't time to show you all today,

so we're coming back next week to show you some more. Until then, from Cliveden, goodbye.

Subtitles by BBC Scotland