Wisbech Antiques Roadshow

This week, the Antiques Roadshow has come to the Fens, in Cambridgeshire

and to the busy market town of Wisbech, on the River Nene.

And in the local museum, a special treasure...

The unique atmosphere of the Fenlands is captured in the original manuscript

of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.

"The marshes were just a long, black horizontal line then, as I stopped to look after him,

"and the river was just another horizontal line, not nearly so broad nor yet so black,

"and the sky was just a row of long angry red lines and dense black lines, intermixed.

"But except for these things and the shudder of the dying day in every blade of grass,

"there was no break in the bleak stillness of the marshes."

Wisbech rose from the Fenlands to become a flourishing community -

its South and North Brink making two of the finest Georgian streets in England.

And this is Peckover House, the finest property in Wisbech.

Peckover has a Dickensian ring to it, but the house was built in 1722.

The Peckovers were a Quaker banking family.

The piece de resistance in the drawing room is this carved pine Rococo decoration over the mirror.

One lady of the house, anticipating the craze for makeovers,

told her husband that she wanted the whole room redecorated.

He, being a cautious banker, said no, so she got the money from her daddy - interest free.

In 1948, Peckover House was presented to the National Trust,

and the garden was the scene of a poignant event, as many contents of the house were put up for sale.

Some items were bought by local people. Will any of those pieces re-emerge at today's Roadshow?

Only one way to find out... Let's join our experts at the Hudson Leisure Centre.

-His nickname is Cue Come.

-Cue Come?

-Cue Come.

-Why Cue Come?

-Well...

my grandfather used to sing a little song that ended "look who's coming", and he was called Cue Come from that.

-Oh, I see.

-But I can't remember the song.

-How old was your grandfather?

Quite old, about 80, 90. It's been in the family for 53 years, because when my mother met her husband,

he used to sit on the television.

-So he's been on television already?

-Exactly!

-Right.

-He's in reasonably good condition.

-He's not too bad and he's been to the States and back.

-He's got a chip.

-Oh, yes. You don't know where he's made?

-I don't.

-Any marks?

No, but I wondered whether his painting was a Satsuma

-because of the gold and the density of the painting.

-Let's see. You're right,

there's a very strong Oriental feel.

You've got pearls, scattered flowers, treasure objects -

all the things that you find in Chinese and Japanese art -

denoting plenty, happiness, joy, abundance. Has he brought you those things?

-Absolutely.

-You look as though he has.

-I look at him every day and I feel happy.

-Oh, that's great, wonderful.

-Yes.

-Well, I'm afraid we aren't going to find the mark.

-No.

These are all firing problems. There's no potter's mark anywhere,

and I have looked quite closely on his coat, and there are no marks there, so how do we go about it?

Well, we look at the raw material.

The raw material is this chalky-coloured, slightly straw-coloured pottery.

It's an earthenware. And that's what it looks like without the glaze.

-Right.

-They then put the glaze on.

If you look very, very closely at that glaze, what do you see?

-Lots of tiny cracks.

-That's right, like a sort of crazy-paving effect, isn't it?

-Yes.

Well, that is the characteristic of what we call Satsuma-ware.

So you're right, it's Japanese. Satsuma-ware is a generic term.

There are lots of kilns, not just in the Satsuma area but all over Japan.

Made some time around the year 1900-1910, maybe,

and beautifully modelled. His toes -

beautiful, aren't they? Little wrinkles.

-And the little podgy fists.

-Yes.

-He's well fed, and chubby cheeks...

I love the way his coconut hairdo is actually modelled in the clay -

they allowed for that, so you got the sense of the bulk of his hairdo.

The whole idea of a little boy is something which, not only in Japanese, but in Chinese culture,

-denotes happiness and abundance.

-Right.

-So he is a good-luck token in his own right.

I haven't ever seen a Satsuma figure of this size,

or of this particular model, so he is unusual.

If you had to replace him, you'd probably have to pay somewhere

in the region of £3,000 to £5,000.

Have to get him insured!

He IS a good-luck charm.

I've recently been given them by my aunt, only about two weeks ago.

-Quite a gift!

-She said she would never wear them again. She said, "I think you ought to have those, dear."

Lovely. When she gave it to you, did you think this was a bracelet?

-Yes.

-And would you be surprised if I told you that it wasn't?

-I would, yes.

-Well, it isn't,

It's a necklace. If you think about the word "necklace",

it's neck lace, quite literally.

-It was a choker necklace?

-Yes, but all neck laces were attached to a lace, a bootlace,

-or a piece of ribbon.

-Yes.

-Now this object is really seriously old -

-1740 to 1760.

-Goodness.

-Good heavens.

This is English work, it's distinctive because it's very flat

and the garnets have been foiled at the back in closed settings. It really comes off the neck

-of a lady who might have been painted by Gainsborough.

-Wonderful.

You can find such jewellery in those paintings. A miracle it's survived.

It has survived because it's been shortened and that's a shame, I have to say.

Yes, I did think that as a bracelet

-it didn't fit snugly on your wrist because it was a little bit stiff.

-That's right.

These were made by designers who wanted them to work in a specific way. When jewellery is altered,

it's always a mistake. It's a bit like old buildings with extensions -

it just ruins them. Most jewellery has been interfered with

at some stage, and this has. One wouldn't expect much else from 1750.

Fascinating. What about this one?

-Here is a neck lace in more conventional form.

-Yes.

The lace has fallen away and we're relying on a box-and-tongue fitting because it's early 19th century.

This is the type of jewellery I think of as Jane Austen jewellery -

it's contemporary with her. Interestingly enough,

this necklace is not only complete, but it's been added to. Which piece?

-This little piece on the end?

-Yeah, yeah, that is an earring...

-Oh!

-Oh, an earring.

-And it's better removed, to be perfectly honest.

Had this necklace been in its original condition, it would probably have been worth...

-between £5,000 and £7,500.

-Good heavens!

-But it isn't,

so that's a bit of a blow. With this garnet replaced, which is very easy, you've got to reckon...

£2,000, just because it's a wonderful, wonderful survival.

This one here - you'd say less garnets, so it must be worth less.

But it is worth the same because it is in its original condition

when you've taken off the earring. And this is not.

-Will you get to wear them too?

-I don't think so!

-You don't know!

I think you will, I do, honestly.

-It was a legacy to me from my maternal grandmother.

-Right.

-How old were you when you got it?

-Very young.

-Very, very young?

-Yes, and I wasn't impressed then

-because I thought what use is a mirror when you can't see in it?

-Exactly,

but I think that's what's nice about it.

-It's not a great mirror, but it is a nice old plate.

-Yes.

-It's not just the fact that it's very foxed,

so that the foiling on the back is coming off, making it look spotted,

but if you put a point on it...

you can measure the distance between the point and its reflection...

-Oh, yes.

-..you halve that visually, and that's how thick the glass is.

-It's a thin glass, so this is almost certainly the original plate.

-Yes.

That's important because not only is it nice to have the original plate,

with a soft, albeit spotted image,

but modern plates are much thicker, and if you put a thicker plate into this, it adds to the weight,

which gives you problems, as these mirrors are very weak here and here.

-Yes, it looks as if it's been repaired there.

-Yes, you've had a break there and there.

-Yes.

Serpentine shape and this lovely shield-shape mirror -

absolutely typical of the 1780s, possibly 1790s. So late 18th C.

The wood is mahogany, but the cross-banding

looks as though it should be tulip wood,

which, when new, would have been a variegated pink, yellow and red,

like a variegated tulip.

So the colouring would have been rather different.

One thing about all these pieces is that I've never yet seen one where the drawers fit properly.

The drawers are all slightly proud. The reason is that, over time,

-the carcass has shrunk.

-Oh, I see.

-The grain of the wood runs this way

and it's shrunk this way, but the drawers have not shrunk in the same direction and so they stand proud.

-Oh!

-Put that back in, and it doesn't go in all the way.

-No.

-Now, when that was new, they would have been flush.

So it's a nice sign of age, that.

It might benefit from a bit of cleaning up,

but it's in pretty original condition. The feet, drawers and knobs are original,

-the ivory discs here, the roundels here...

-Would those clean up?

-Those would clean up perfectly well.

-I rather like them as they are, though.

-Yes, yes.

-All in all, it's a very pretty piece.

I would have expected, with a bit of work, a bit of cleaning up,

perhaps one or two of these replaced veneers repaired better,

I would expect this to be...selling for about £1,800, maybe £2,000.

-I think that's the sort of insurance value you should put on it.

-Yes.

-Very nice.

-Thank you.

-Thank YOU.

-It's been in the family certainly since the 1930s.

-It's been well used.

-It's been beside the fire ever since I can remember. Been a log box.

-Oh, right.

Originally, it would have been made to hold papers in, certainly not logs, but that's a good use for it.

-It's made of hide.

-Yes.

-I think, possibly, cow or pony hide.

It's decorated with these squares of fabled beasts

-and also the double-headed eagle.

-A double-headed eagle, is it? Ah.

So I think it's definitely Continental,

-possibly German or Austrian.

-Oh...

-And if we look at the mounts at the back here, the iron mounts,

that is one indication of age - it probably dates from the late 18th C.

-So I'd think, perhaps, 1780, 1790.

-Wow!

-I think this piece is probably a later replacement.

-Yes.

-Value - as a novelty fun item it might fetch perhaps £500 to £700.

It will stay by the fire! Thank you very much.

That is just after I went into the army, training at Warminster.

-How long were you in the army before you were captured?

-I went out in about late 1940 and then we went up,

and then we went up the desert to Sidi Barani in the early part of the war and then we were withdrawn

and sent over to Greece in the April, and I was captured about the end of April

along with the rest of... There were 120 taken prisoner

and the balance of the 600 men in the 3rd Battalion Tanks

were all killed or drowned in the sinking of the boats as they were leaving for Crete.

-How long were you a prisoner?

-I was a prisoner for four and a half years.

So here we have a copy of Hitler's Mein Kampf - My Struggle - because it's in English. How did you get it?

It was when I went into the men's stalag. I think I bought it

with some money off somebody in the stalag, and I've kept it ever since, up to the present day.

-Yes, POW number...?

-1250.

-1250, just checking. And what was your army number?

My army number was 7909120, Royal Tank Regiment.

-A short number because you were an old soldier. You were a good-looking bloke.

-Thank you!

-This really is the most unspeakably smart dress. Isn't it wonderful?

-It is.

-Who wore it?

-My wife,

-and before her, her mother-in-law.

-What a family treasure.

-Yes, indeed.

-Looks like the Odeon Cinema, doesn't it?

-Yes. That's what dates it.

Yes. Very Deco, very chic.

-I think you ought to insure it for somewhere round about £300.

-Really?

Goodness me, I would never have thought that much, but nice to know.

-I don't think it will go out of the family, though.

-No, I wouldn't let it go if it was mine.

Well, let's have a look.

I don't believe it! It was painted white?

-It was emulsioned.

-Did you know what you were buying?

-Not until I saw it in the distance.

-Yes.

-And the size of the vase is what I liked.

-Can I ask you the princely sum that you paid for this?

-A pound.

-A pound.

And he lifted it and gave it to me, and I turned it up, like that, to have a look...

-And you saw the name.

-Clarice Cliff.

-And you saw the name Clarice Cliff.

-So what did you strip it with?

-Soap and water. It was just emulsion.

You did all right for a pound because this is called a lotus jug.

Gay Day is the pattern, in case you wondered. If I was to say the value...

is somewhere between £600 to £800...

You couldn't tell me where this car boot sale is, could you?

I think we'll hazard a guess...

a terrier, possibly a wire fox terrier?

-What do you think?

-I'm not very good on dogs, I'm afraid. We call him Arthur at home because...

Arthur Wardle - the signature here - is one of the best artists

working at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century.

He painted dogs with such vitality and personality

that he's almost ready to spring right out of the painting,

and I'm sure that's why people love his work.

If you look at the quite detailed and rather heavy impasto -

the build-up of paint on the dog, in contrast with the background -

what it actually does is, it throws the head and the portrait of the dog forward,

-giving him that extra kind of personality and the poignancy.

-He looks like he's just jumped up,

like someone has called to him. He looks so real,

the way he stands forward there.

-Now, we must consider the value for Arthur - is that his name?

-Yes.

-Why Arthur?

-Because of the artist's name.

Oh, I see! I'm sorry I didn't get that!

-I thought there was some other family connection.

-No, no.

But coming back to the price,

I think, probably, the value is in the region of £4,000 to £6,000.

-Thank you. He's always been one of the family, really.

-Yes.

-Where is it from?

-I bought it from a fete.

-How much did you pay?

-Two shillings.

-Two shillings!

-Yes.

-Very good! Do you know anything about it?

-I just know that it's a piece of Martin ware.

-Right.

I was told that it was a tobacco jar.

This is a popular misconception that they're tobacco jars.

They have this detachable head which revolves,

and you can change the expression. But can you imagine a man

trying to get tobacco out?

It wouldn't fulfil that function at all.

And tobacco must be kept pressed,

so you need a weight and it must be airtight.

Well, no way is that airtight. So they were never tobacco jars,

they were just amusing figures whose expression you could change.

They were made by a man called Robert Wallace Martin,

who was the elder of four brothers and they had a kiln.

The three brothers worked there. Robert Wallace modelled these, Robert Fraser threw the pots,

Edwin did the small pots and the decoration,

and then Charles ran the shop in the city.

They were the first true studio potters

who were enjoying clay just for the fun of it, really.

I joined one of the major auction houses as a porter in the mid-60s,

and I hated it, I couldn't STAND ceramics.

Why would anybody spend £10 on a boring dinner plate? To me it didn't make any sense at all.

Then, one day, one of these came in,

a Martin Brothers owl, and I thought, "Yeah, I can see the fun the person had out of making this,

"it's a joy."

-And suddenly I was converted, and I've been hooked on Martin ware ever since.

-Ah.

And, indeed, ceramics generally.

The Martins always fully mark their pieces, and here we've got

RW Martin and Brothers...

London - that's where they had the shop - and Southall. The date we've got on here is 29.3.1911,

and because the head was separate,

they should match up with the same mark and date on the base there,

and yours does marry up.

Sometimes the dates are different and people aren't so keen on them.

This one's got a bit of damage to it, a little chip, not too serious,

but even so, we're looking at your 10p

-turning into about £3,000 to £5,000.

-Gosh, I can't believe it!

-Well done!

Oh, that's marvellous, isn't it?

I was hoping to find a map of Cambridgeshire. What happened to it?

Originally, we understood there to be 3 rolls of maps, but when my father moved from Kent to Lincolnshire,

-about 13 years ago, one disappeared in transit.

-That's a shame.

-But they were in scruffy condition?

-Yes, they're in terrible condition.

It's a a worry opening it up. But the great thing about these Greenwood maps

is that it's all there. Greenwood did a wonderful atlas which he surveyed here,

made in the years 1818 and 1819,

and then subsequently corrected to the present period

and published in 1830, so this is the 1830 edition.

Each county was done in fantastic detail with hand-coloured plates,

and each with a lovely vignette, as you can see. This is Staffordshire,

which is nowhere near here, but it's just a nice example, this.

This particular one is in really nice condition.

Of course, the real problem

-is that you've lost half or a third of the counties.

-Yes.

Try and stop them being rolled up like this, because each time you unroll it, they're falling apart.

Oh, this is my father - he kept them like that, rolled up in the bottom of the wardrobe.

Well, that's no bad thing because it keeps them out of the light,

so they haven't faded at all, they're still as bright as the day they were painted, which is nice.

-They've got some rather dog-eared maps amongst them.

-Yes.

-But a single good county like this,

in this sort of condition, is worth, perhaps, £200-£250 for a single county.

Now, I'm not very good at sums,

but you've got about £2,500-£3,000 worth of county maps here,

-even in this scruffy condition.

-Good gracious!

-Now please look after them.

It's as light as a feather, this ring. Made of hair, you knew that?

-Yes.

-It's interesting to me because it's an extraordinary survival.

Hair is one of the things that can be taken from a human being

that never perishes, so since ancient times, it's been used in jewellery.

This is jewellery without a piece of gold or a gemstone in sight,

and we can see that there are two types of hair, if not three, at work here, showing the design,

-and the name "Charles" is clearly visible.

-Yes.

As we turn the ring round, we'll see that Charles' hair appears here,

but it's kept safe by the use of black horsehair.

-Oh.

-Now this helps me date this ring, it's very old indeed, 1760. We have to consider the possibility

that Charles had died and this is a mourning ring.

They're astonishingly rare. They survive in some museum collections,

but the temptation by children to wear them and ruin them, is so great

they simply don't come down to us, so it's rather exciting.

-And to be excited by a ring without any precious material is rather odd.

-It is, yes.

-Where did you find it?

-I bought it at auction. Nobody else was interested - I bid £1 and got it.

-Wonderful.

-I think, possibly it's worth 300 times the price you paid.

-Wow!

-£300.

-I knew it was worth more than £1, but £300 I didn't expect.

-No.

It's wonderful. I rarely see them - great joy to see it. Thank you.

How long have you been collecting?

Since 1992, after a holiday in Egypt.

-How many pieces have you collected?

-12 pieces I've managed to find.

-Twelve, right.

-So we've got almost your entire collection on the table.

-It's difficult finding the pots.

-I bet.

I've gone to antique fairs, auctions, and I've bought every one I've seen.

-It's a one-man market.

-Well...

-And you're it! But it's not Egyptian.

-No.

-It's Doulton, good old English factory.

You've got an earthenware Doulton plate which shows a god receiving the Pharaoh with his attendants.

That would have been done, just before World War I,

but then Carnarvon went into the tomb of Tutankhamen in the 1920s - '21 or '22?

November 1922.

'22, brilliant. And Doulton carried on using a pattern that they'd used before World War I,

but they just added Tutankhamen's treasures, Luxor.

So it was a piece of thrifty work by the Doulton factory.

But my favourite piece of all is this one. It looks like a sort of Egyptian Antiques Roadshow,

with these characters walking along with their little pottery pieces,

and there he is, sitting there, Henry Sandon examining the pot.

That's my favourite, it's gorgeous.

-So value... My guess is, the average price you'll have paid for these is about £50, £60.

-Yes.

Here, you've got about, what, £500, £600, it's cost you?

But to insure it, well, you can add another 100% on that

in terms of trying to put a collection like this together again today.

-We found two of these helmets in the attic of our house.

-Two?

-Yes.

My son is very interested in militaria and he asked me to bring them today to find out,

-you know, what we could, about them.

-This is a very rare helmet.

If it was in perfect condition, it would be so terribly desirable,

that I can't begin to tell you, you know, just how desirable it would be to collectors.

The date is around 1793 to 1796.

It's called a Tarlatan helmet.

It's named after Bannister Tarlatan, who was a British officer in the American Revolutionary War.

He designed the helmet for himself, adopted by the British Light Cavalry

and worn throughout the Napoleonic wars.

It should have a beautiful bearskin crest over the top.

This is leopard skin. Now, if you know what a leopard looks like,

it's a very nice ginger, with black spots, you can see a bit here,

but it must have looked magnificent when it was as it should be.

They call this part the turban,

and this is the name of the regiment - the Louth Yeomanry.

This helmet, although it's in such relic condition,

-is worth £2,000.

-Really?

Really. If it was as it should be, it's worth £8,000.

So Lilian Ream was the town photographer, and this is an archive of her pictures. What's this one?

Well, this is a photograph of Lilian Ream and her staff taken in 1929.

Her studio started in 1909 and ran on to 1971.

-Was she unique then, a woman doing this kind of work?

-I wouldn't say unique, but certainly unusual,

outside big cities, to set up her own studio.

-And who's this?

-This is Peter Scott.

-So it is.

He lived in the lighthouse at Sutton Bridge.

-And who's this couple?

-They are a well-known family in the area.

-Certainly local characters.

-Wonderful faces.

When I look at the marks underneath it,

they are the marks of Henry Chawner who made it in 1788.

Henry Chawner was quite a famous family who specialised in teapots and teawares and so on.

-Now, in 1788, that would have been absolutely plain.

-Oh, right.

-So my first thoughts, when I saw it, it's Victorian, which it is.

-Right.

-But underneath it tells me it's Georgian.

-Oh, right.

This after-chasing and embellishment was done in the 19th century,

-but it's halved its value.

-Right.

-That's the bad news.

-Right.

So if I said to you, today you'd possibly get about £600 for it, is that good news or not?

Oh, yes, I thought it was only worth about £100, so...

Oh, well, at least you've got that.

-It's always been called the lantern clock.

-That's the correct term.

So many people call them Cromwellian clocks or sheep's-head clocks,

but this is a proper lantern clock.

-It's not quite what it seems to be.

-Oh.

-No, don't worry about it, I'm not running it down at all.

One would have expected, if this had been original,

to have basically hung on a wall bracket, or hung on the wall with a hoop and spurs

-with probably a long pendulum...

-Yes.

-..and a weight.

And it doesn't have that because it winds up here through the dial -

-two winding squares. I see you've brought this key.

-Yes.

-Do you wind it regularly?

-Every morning.

-Every morning?

-Yes.

-But not fully because we don't know how far we dare turn the key.

-Right.

So, to be on the safe side, we do it a little bit every morning.

Well, that's very interesting too!

Let's open the clock and see what we can actually tell you about it.

It's got side doors as all lantern clocks have,

and there is a nice-quality Victorian two-train fusee movement.

-That tells you it's a much longer duration than 30 hours.

-Ah.

You can quite happily wind this clock up - both the striking and the going trains - for 8-day duration.

With this sort of mechanism there is a physical lock, a fusee stop,

-and you cannot overwind it.

-Right, thank you.

-OK, a clock like this,

you should be able to get to within a few seconds a week

if it's kept in a constant temperature.

The original, of course, would not perhaps have been quite as accurate, depending on the sort of escapement.

A nice-quality movement and absolutely typically Victorian.

-I would suggest 1860 to 1870 on this movement.

-Oh.

Now, stylistically, the case is significantly earlier,

-it's 200 years earlier in style.

-Really?

This is where we come to the funny bit, because so many lantern clocks were butchered in Victorian times.

They put in these movements because it was much easier to have it sitting on a table or on a shelf

than to have it hanging on a wall where children would have disturbed the pendulum and the weights.

And you often see evidence of where they've been altered, because underneath you still have the holes

-where the chains or the ropes came through.

-Right, right.

-But not here.

Neither this bottom plate or the top plate have any evidence that they've been messed around with,

so I tend to think that it is a Victorian copy.

The only thing that slightly changes my mind is that the dial is... Oops.

..the dial is so very well engraved

and the winding squares have been cut into the engraving,

-so maybe they used this dial plate off an earlier clock.

-Mmm.

So, in my opinion, we have a Victorian copy of a period clock.

Because it's a Victorian copy, we're not talking enormous sums of money,

but it would fetch, at auction...

-about £1,500.

-Ooh.

If it was cleaned and overhauled, it would certainly be over £2,000.

That's very nice. Thank you very much.

I haven't seen many sofas which look as good from the back,

and this is really stunning.

The back has this wonderful matched veneered panels of walnut,

and the walnut veneers are carried round the ends, with the bookcases,

which have shelves on all sides, and on this side, too. It's a really remarkable thing,

and the whole piece is designed to be seen from any angle. So where did you find it?

Well, I was a young technician in the air force in '64,

and we lived near Fakenham and we saw it in an antique shop in Fakenham and the antique dealer

told us that it was made by Gillows of Lancaster...for one of the houses at Sandringham.

-And you know it's a Gillows piece?

-Well, there's actually a plate fixed underneath the edge here.

-We shan't argue with that, then. Made in the 30s?

-Mm.

It's very much in the Deco style.

-Unfortunately, we had to put our furniture into storage when we went to North Africa for two years.

-Yes.

And the storage deteriorated the cover.

It was in a real jazzy Art-Deco fabric, like streaks of lightning,

and it smelt a bit when we took it out of storage so we had it recovered and, unfortunately, we picked Dralon.

You've got to use the thing,

-and nobody wants to live with a smelly sofa.

-No.

-But certainly a more appropriate fabric...

-Do you think it would be worth recovering?

-I think it would look sensational if it was well chosen.

-But what intrigues me is that it was in an antique shop in 1964. It's only 30 years old.

-That's right.

-And I imagine that in the mid-60s, Deco furniture wasn't terribly fashionable.

-No, no.

I mean, are you a far-sighted man?

-It looked almost modern as well as old, you know.

-I like it very much.

It's very, very stylish and, as you say, it IS modern, it's definitely '30s.

-Yeah.

-Very typical, but it really could stand being put anywhere,

at any age. Now, in 1964, how much did you pay for it?

-Well, people will ridicule us, we only paid £18 for it.

-£18.

-But remember that £18 was two weeks' pay

for a technician, and that's equivalent to maybe £400 now.

-This type of furniture is becoming more and more sought after.

-Really?

Yeah. I mean, it's not yet 100 years old,

but it's already, in many people's view, an antique, and there is a strong collector's market

for 30s and Deco-style furniture. If you add to that

the glorious name of Waring and Gillow, in the right market,

this is going to be worth at least...

-£3,500.

-Good Lord.

-So it's not a bad investment.

-It's an artefact that you keep because you like the look of it.

-Certainly comfortable.

As far as we know, Great-grandfather bought it. He used to live in London.

It would have been early part of the century that he moved here, in about 1918, into the Wisbech area.

Well, it's by Alexander Johnston - we can tell that from the signature.

-Oh, right.

-And it's also got a date,

which you can just read - of 1863.

And on the back it's got a label,

-and the title of the picture is "The Cotter's Saturday Night".

-Yes.

-Now, a cotter, as I understand it,

-is a tied peasant, tied to a larger estate.

-Yeah.

-And he has to pay for the cottage he lives in,

with either labour or money.

So you might call this man rich in that respect, because you can see,

-he's got his wife and, it looks like, six strapping children.

-Yes.

It's wonderful luminous quality about it.

All...or most of the light is coming from this oil lamp here.

It reminds me of Continental artists who painted in a luminous way

because their faces are lit up in this wonderful warm

and very sensual colouring of reds and yellows.

It's very important with Victorian paintings to read them like a book,

-because you can, all the clues are there.

-Yes.

-He's either reading out his accounts,

which doesn't sound very likely to me - with his wife and children?

More likely, I think, he's reading the family Bible to them,

and they're all listening with varying degrees of attention,

according to their age and inclination. Um...

it's a very poor environment, the cottage has little in it.

There's just a single piece of china on the mantelpiece up here.

The light, and maybe there's another light up here...

They can't afford light because oil is too expensive.

The youngest child is much more interested in the moth that is approaching the flame of the lamp,

but then with that analogy we come back to the father and the Bible.

The moth is tempted by the flame, so the child is more interested in temptation than the Good Word,

so you've got moralistic themes here. Very Victorian in that way,

but also beautifully painted.

The figure grouping is complex, but works wonderfully

with these great lines of composition that come back and round to the focus - the father.

This kind of genre painting is becoming more understood as history,

rather than something Victorian - yuk!

-We can look at it with more balanced judgement.

-Yes.

Now, a value on such a thing. Alexander Johnston was a Scotsman -

Scottish paintings are quite the vogue at the moment.

-Um...possibly £20,000 to £30,000.

-Right, yeah.

And it could well do more.

We seem to have a full house of all the royal residences. Curiously, locally, we don't have Sandringham.

-How did you come by this collection?

-It was handed down...

to my step-grandfather by the chief librarian of Windsor Castle.

-Was he Mr Woodward?

-That's correct. He was appointed there in 1860,

and this scrapbook and the invitations were handed down by a member of his family,

-through down to my family.

-He seems to have been invited to all these,

so he obviously had a nice life. It's a wonderful picture of life in Victorian England,

with these grand invitations. But although those are interesting,

really the main thing is this fantastic album here...

and, perhaps, it's worth starting almost right at the beginning.

-This is full of absolutely riveting things, isn't it?

-Yes.

And while he was at Windsor Castle, he obviously received letters

and wrote letters on behalf of the Queen and the Royal Family, and rather than chucking them away,

he obviously kept them, nicely mounted in this album.

I think one of the nicest things, right at the beginning,

are these two scribbled notes from Queen Victoria to him in pencil,

just asking him to... It says "Dear Mr Woodward,

"send over those drawings," and then it's rather difficult to read which drawings, which is maddening.

But you can imagine her imperiously saying, "Send over those drawings!" Here it is, "November 17th 1864."

Here she's asking for a volume of somebody's English history.

It conjures up a wonderful picture of Queen Victoria sitting in her ivory tower,

sending for Woodward and all his books. He was obviously a friend of the Royal Family,

because here you've got this delightful sketch where it says,

"Princess Louise and Miss Bowyer.

"In the distance, BB Woodward and Mr Roland Roland."

-So this is actually Woodward in one of the drawings.

-Yes.

The album is full of the most extraordinary things

and, you know, it would take weeks to go through it all.

You've got a cheque signed by the Duke of Wellington.

Here you've got...

a letter from John Ruskin,

the great man of letters and the arbiter of taste in Victorian times about art.

Sadly, the contents of the letters isn't wildly exciting,

but nevertheless, it's still very interesting.

-There's a limit to what you can say to a librarian, though, isn't there?

-Yes,

the relationship with these people was a professional relationship,

in other words, he wasn't writing as a friend,

-you're quite right, he was probably more instructive or demanding, rather like Queen Victoria.

-Yes.

And this is extremely rare - Florence Nightingale.

You don't get Nightingale autographs like this. And so it goes on.

The whole thing is wonderful. Once again, there's another of the great Victorian figures - Darwin.

Fantastic. And it would take weeks to go through them all,

but it's a real treat to see them. It's very difficult -

until one has a chance to go right through the whole lot - to value it,

and because they're clipped out and pasted in, the value of some letters has diminished a bit,

but, with a bit of research,

it would be worth somewhere between £5,000 and £10,000 for the collection.

The drawing alone is worth probably £700 or £800.

So a jolly nice thing to have.

If every picture tells a story, we've come to the right place today.

Lilian Ream's photographs of life in Wisbech leave a strong impression of the way it was in the early 1900s.

What with that and the documents and books of all kinds to pore over, it's been quite an education.

From Wisbech, until next week, goodbye.

Subtitles by Gillian Frazer BBC Scotland 2000

E-mail us at [email protected]