Christmas Special Antiques Roadshow

Tonight, we're unwrapping our very own Christmas special.

We've come back to Lyme Park in Cheshire,

where recently we welcomed over 2,000 visitors

who brought along their family treasures.

And it's the perfect backdrop to our show.

We've uncovered a magical Christmas story connected to a little girl

who lived here many years ago.

Her name was Phyllis and she wrote a book reflecting on her life here

when she was 11. And this is it,

Treasure On Earth, A Country House Christmas.

And it's a perfect snapshot of an Edwardian Christmas in 1906.

In it she reveals the traditions and characters and fun

of the people who lived here in Lyme Park,

both upstairs and downstairs.

Phyllis tells us about her parents, Lord and Lady Newton,

throwing a lavish Christmas party in the Grand Hall for all

their staff, capturing the happy scene in her drawings and paintings.

In strict hierarchy the family would appear from the left

and the estate workers from the right.

Meeting in the middle, they'd take their partners

and spend the evening dancing and eating.

Phyllis describes how her mother would hand out

gifts of joints of beef to all the staff.

The butler would call out the names, the shepherd would place each

joint of beef in a cloth and then Lady Newton would tie

the corners of the cloth, while exchanging Christmas greetings.

The account reveals other Christmas traditions.

In Phyllis' words, the Christmas tree was decked with

"rainbow-coloured iridescent glass balls hanging singly

"and in garlands, shows of sparkling tinsel, bells and stars,

"trumpets and violins."

The greatest moment of excitement for Phyllis was of course,

as for all children, when the presents were handed

out from beneath the tree.

The children from both upstairs and downstairs would process around

the tree carrying Chinese lanterns.

And Phyllis describes how Truelove, the butler,

would follow behind with a bucket of water, just in case of fire.

Here in the glowing Christmas-bedecked drawing room

of Lyme Park, I'll be talking shortly to our specialist Will Farmer

about what would have been on Phyllis' Christmas list back then.

But first, let's see what family heirlooms excited our experts

when we visited here back in the summer.

And first we're off to the races with expert Jon Baddeley,

who uncovered an intriguing piece of history from the murky

world of illegal betting.

I have to say, this is one of the strangest things

I've ever seen on the Antiques Roadshow.

You've brought in a rather tatty canvas bag with a top made

out of Bakelite, so not precious metals or anything.

And the only give-away to what it is, it says, "The Tic-Tac."

And although I'm not much of a racing person, I'm sure that's

to do with a racing term about how they communicated.

So tell me, what is it?

Well, my mum used to have to run down to the train station with

this bag full of betting slips.

And when was this?

This would have been during the war, so about 1942, 1943.

-At which point betting was illegal, wasn't it?

-It was.

So she is a bit concerned.

So I won't give her name away.

THEY LAUGH

-She is worried.

-OK.

So I would have knocked on her door

and pretend to have a cup of tea and say,

"Can I have £5 on the 3.30 at Chester?"

And you put it in the bag.

Well, the odds put on, you'd get your copy of that.

-And it goes in.

-And it goes in.

-OK.

-Right, so that's in the bag and there is the clock

that's in there which currently tells the time.

So when all bets have been taken, the clock gets put in the top

here and then the top is put on,

pushed up, it's now locked. That's stopped the clock.

My mum had to run down to the station,

give it to the station master or porter.

It went on the train from Altrincham and at the other end,

someone there took it to the illegal bookie's,

who would get the bets out with the key and they would know

at what time the bets were placed in, that they were placed

before the race was won or run.

So there was no opportunity to any skulduggery, so that

actually somebody could put a bet in after the race had happened.

That's right, they couldn't do it because the watch was stopped.

-Absolutely ingenious.

-Yeah, ingenious.

-So...

And nobody got caught.

THEY LAUGH

-Yet.

-Not yet.

-Oh, don't.

-Well, bad news, it's...

-Worth nothing.

-The bad news, it's not worth a great deal.

-OK.

The good news is that we've all learned about what this is

and I think it's ingenious and I love it,

so it really should go into

I think the Horse Racing Museum at Newmarket

would be delighted to have that, as I'm sure they haven't got one.

So it's a museum piece beyond value.

Oh, she'll be delighted.

-Good. Thank you very much.

-Thank you very much.

-We've learned a lot.

-Thank you.

So what's in this bright orange bag?

So this is a picture that was in my granny's house in Liverpool.

I've known it all my life.

It's, as you can see, a little boy.

So we've got a Christmassy scene with a boy,

he's obviously gathering holly.

Maybe he's been out borrowing it and he's going to sell it

and make a few pennies.

Rattling the change in his pocket here.

I love the way he's got a little bit of holly in his hat there.

-Yeah, that's really sweet, yeah.

-Yes, very sweet.

I think he's been sent out to collect this

and he didn't really want to go.

That's... Oh, do you think that's what it is?

And so he's a bit cold and wants to get back in.

-He's definitely not looking happy about it, is he?

-Not at all.

He's giving you a very beady eye.

It's sort of a fairly bleak landscape there

and rather unidentifiable, which is quite clever

cos it could then be sold sort of more or less anywhere.

Yeah, yeah, and do you put holly in the back of it at Christmas?

-We do, yes.

-You do?

-Yes, we do and we have it lit so that we can see.

-Excellent.

The number of pictures one finds with holly berries stuck in the

stretchers behind, it's, you know with a sort of pimple at the front.

This one's actually on canvas laid on to board.

It's signed down here J Aitken, a Scottish artist.

Oh, right, OK.

And it's probably sort of 1870s, 1880s.

And right now, in this bright sunlight, I think it's rather nice.

Yeah, well, we enjoy it, you know, I've always loved it

and I hope that I'll always have it.

So I think if you were to sell it,

you'd get the best part of £1,000.

-Really?

-Yeah.

-OK, that's really nice to know. Thank you.

So you've come here wearing an absolutely massive necklace.

You look like Boudicca, Queen of the Iceni.

-Oh thank you.

-Where did you get it from?

It came from my late husband's cousin who was a collector

of beads and jewellery, and she puts pieces together.

She used to live in London, she lives in Norfolk now and she's

quite elderly, but she just has the most amazing collection.

I used to do quite a lot to look after her, she used

to give me something and I've inherited all this wonderful amber.

It's stunning, isn't it and of course

the east coast of England is a great place to find amber.

It has a relationship with the Baltic countries.

And from time to time, if you're really lucky, you can

find it on the beaches in Southwold and Sheringham.

But also your links to Boudicca and the Iceni are not

fanciful at all because amber was hugely interesting to mankind since

antiquity and people perhaps didn't understand it in the same way but

it was hugely decorative and they took it to their graves with them.

And what do you really like about it?

Um, I love the colours, I love all the different things,

so the earrings, the flies in them, the fact it's a very natural

sort of material and I love the fact this is very light.

I don't wear it very often, it's not a daily ritual to put this on.

Oh, I think it is. I think it works really well.

So amber, what is it? It's fossilised resin,

isn't it, and it's hundreds of thousands of years old.

This is sap that dripped down the sides of coniferous trees

in the main, in an antediluvian forest that was hot and sticky,

full of massive dragonflies and primeval beasts wandering around.

And it is the purest form of fossil that we know about

because when these flies fell into the sap, it overwhelmed them,

it simply took over them

and they're frozen into the substance of the amber perfectly.

You can see, when one takes the microscope to them, you can see

their compound eyes, their antenna, their wings and every aspect.

They are the most perfect fossil that we can encounter.

And so they're hugely influential in the world of palaeontology.

But it's of great antiquity,

hundreds of thousands of years old. So here are your earrings,

aren't they, and there are insects imprisoned in there, aren't there?

-Yes.

-Magic. So you've got fossil bugs swinging from your ears.

But anyway, we're going to talk a bit about value

and value's actually rather a strange phenomenon in this regard.

Because the Chinese have taken a huge interest in amber.

They love the amber that you're wearing round your neck,

this opaque amber. And in my youth, this was really simply decorative.

They were worth 80 to £100.

What was 80 to £100 is now 500 or £600

-and I think your necklace is worth £1,000.

-Oh, wow.

And maybe this lovely selection you've brought here

is worth another £1,000.

So somewhere in the region of 2,000 maybe even £3,000.

-My goodness, wow.

-A fortune.

Well, thank you.

I'm a book man myself,

so it's really odd to find myself at the Antiques Roadshow

with a piece of furniture,

particularly one that looks as bizarre as this.

But the reason is that he has a Dickens connection

and he's in the Pickwick Papers. Now what do you know about him?

I inherited the book and the figure from my paternal grandmother

-and she was a Johnson.

-Mm-hmm.

And she and her predecessors lived in Ayscoughfee Hall, in Spalding.

-So that's where the book and the figure came from.

-Mm-hm.

Well, let's see where this chap actually

features in the Pickwick Papers.

He's illustrated in part of the story here,

one of the illustrations, and you can see him here kicking his leg up.

Essentially, in brief, the story is that a traveller goes

to a country pub, drinks too much, wakes up in the night

and thinks that a chair is talking to him.

And here's the chair here and it's a very close match.

Do you know how the figure came to be in Ayscoughfee Hall?

Yes. The library is panelled out with African mahogany

and it was always understood in the family that the cabinet maker

in the Grand House also possibly with having some

leftover solid mahogany, made this figure.

Right. Well it's very interesting.

Obviously being a piece of furniture,

I've showed it to one of my colleagues who deals with

furniture and do you know, funnily enough, it's actually oak.

-It's actually not mahogany.

-Oh, right.

Which partly explains the weight, which you will have found

when you were bringing it to the Roadshow and we think,

you know, as you say, it dates from about 1840,

which is exactly contemporaneous with the Pickwick Papers.

And has it played a big part in your life?

Well, he was always much-loved by my brother and I as children.

He resided in my grandmother's hallway and we always tapped

the top of his head every time before we went upstairs to bed.

Ah, yeah. Well, he definitely appeals to children

but I think he would appeal to Dickens collectors as well.

I think, if he were to come up at auction, he would probably be

estimated at something like 3,000 to £5,000.

And I think he'd attract a huge amount of attention.

-Thank you for bringing him.

-My pleasure.

The most extraordinary thing is about this scrap album,

is that we see hundreds on the Roadshow

and they're never in really good condition.

But I have seldom seen an album that is so beautiful as this one.

So tell me about it. Where did it come from?

Well, it was given to my Great Aunt Edith on her tenth birthday, so.

So you've got a picture of her.

Yes, that's her there and she must have compiled this over a few years.

I don't know how it happened to come into my aunt's possession.

-Was she a very meticulous person?

-Yes.

Because this album has been maintained meticulously.

It really is absolutely perfect.

We've got a picture here to start off with, as you would,

a Victorian lady, you'd start off with Queen Victoria of course

and Balmoral, which looks very much as it does today.

And you turn over the page and of course you've got

the Prince and Princess of Wales.

Then you go on and these I have rarely seen,

which is a collection of Shakespeare characters,

all with the actors of the day mentioned.

Shylock and Portia.

Then over here Beatrice and Benedick,

which is Henry Irving, Sir Henry Irving

and the great Ellen Terry here as well.

And it goes on for pages like this, all beautifully decorated.

But the thing I think that sticks out for me are these ones here

and it's a panorama of Derby Day.

And it starts off on the road to the Derby,

the start and this is literally everybody going along to the Derby.

The pictures here are absolutely stunning with

all their carriages and everybody getting excited.

These would have been bought from a stationer's.

They'd have been transferred and cut up by your aunt

and gradually laid out here. And it goes on,

here we are, the road to the Derby and the road to refreshments

and the inn here and we go on to the course and there's the race,

which is absolutely tremendous. Derby Day was a great day.

Everybody was having the most wonderful time.

The Epsom Downs were covered with jugglers and conjurers

and circus acts and all the rest of it.

You said Epsom. Now, she lived in Epsom.

-She lived in Epsom?

-Yes.

-So this would have been absolutely perfect.

-Yes.

And this is the Derby Day, the end of it and it's complete chaos

and people are all over the place.

They're drunk, they're falling off, it's an absolute riot.

So what do you do with it now? Do you show it to your children?

Yes, I show it to my grandchildren.

My aunt, who used to look after this,

-used to bring it out on special occasions.

-Yes.

We used to sit round, my sister and I, and then my children when

we went to visit her, she used to get it out and we had a look at it.

Well, they're always terribly difficult to value,

but I think you've got somewhere between

-800 and £1,000 worth of scraps.

-Goodness me.

That's wonderful.

-It is, isn't it?

-Yes, yes.

-I think so too.

And we will value it greatly.

-Well, you do anyway. Thank you for bringing it in.

-Thank you.

What a gorgeous scrapbook

and we'll have more from our summer visit to Lyme Park in a moment.

But first here at a Christmassy Lyme Park, I'm with Will Farmer.

Now, Will, let's talk about Christmas Day, the high point for any

child and grown-up, actually. And we're surrounded by gifts here.

What kind of presents would a child like Phyllis, say, in 1906,

have received under the tree?

Well, of course she would have been in that most fantastically

privileged position, you know, the daughter of a great estate owner.

Her gifts would have been, you know, grand.

They would have matched the environment that she lived in.

It's not unreasonable that she would have come down on

Christmas morning and under the tree, waiting for her, would have

been a spectacular dolls' house. Something like this, which has been

very kindly loaned to us from the Museum of Childhood at Sudbury Hall

in Derbyshire. And a model like this would have quite possibly been built

for Phyllis by one of the estate workers, the estate carpenter.

Gosh. I can just imagine how excited a child would be to get that.

The play that a child would have enjoyed with something like that.

And what about the bear? Would that have come Phyllis's way?

Oh without a doubt. I mean, just look at this bear. He's fantastic.

I mean, it's the production of the great Steiff company.

At the beginning of the 20th century, they were credited with

launching the bear, creating the bear.

And actually, by about 1907, it's down on record

that it's believed they manufactured upwards of nearly a million bears.

The catalogue of Steiff included some 1,300 different toys,

felt animals, so somebody, maybe below stairs,

could have quite happily accessed one of the little,

sweet little bears or one of the sweet little felt toys.

But a bear of this scale would have come to the

daughter of a house like this.

And what about the books because they're a perennial,

aren't they, on Christmas Day?

Well, these are actually mine.

I have a really close affection for these books

because these were originally my grandfather's, who was born in 1911.

He then handed them to my mum and then

when it was deemed I was sensible and, you know, careful enough

to own them, they came to me when I was about nine, ten years old.

But this is a series of books, you know, The Wizard Of Oz,

a story that is so magical that went on to be one of those most

famous films in history.

But what we're looking at here is the original start of that

and these are beautifully-produced books.

You know, Frank Baum first published that original story in 1900,

but on it went to create a whole series of tales,

from all those characters that we know.

By the late 19th, early 20th century,

when the printing presses were absolutely at full speed,

it meant that books were accessible to anyone and everyone.

-And what would these be worth today?

-Well it's really interesting

because of course this has become a huge, huge area of collecting.

If you can find a signed first edition with Frank Baum's

signature in it, the most recent one sold actually fetched 152,000.

-Wow.

-But these are sort of second editions, later editions.

But even there, these books today are worth between,

in the condition they're in, between 300, 400, £500 each.

And what about the bear?

That must be a stonking value, I would think.

He's a good bear. He's a 1909 bear,

he's got everything you would want from a Steiff bear of that date.

Great colour, great condition, great expression, lovely hump,

the boot button eyes.

You want to own him, you're probably going to have to spend

the best part of 4,000, maybe even £5,000.

Wow. Goodness me. Thanks, Will.

The carpenter we were talking about wouldn't have been

making things just for Christmas Day for his children.

Of course he would have been employed making

and repairing things all around the estate, all year round.

And one such piece came along to the Roadshow here at Lyme Park

when we visited in the summer, as Elaine Bingham found out.

It's fascinating hearing stories of Christmas past here at Lyme.

And I understand that the original owner of this table

-was a relation of yours.

-Correct.

And he's mentioned in this book.

-He is.

-There's an account of a Christmas here at Lyme.

-There is.

-Who was he?

My great-great grandfather, Samuel Gregory,

was in service on the Lyme Estate in the late 1800s.

And you have a photograph of him.

Yes, that's him on the golf course at Lyme.

And what was his role here?

He was a plumber, plumber and glazier.

This is a drop leaf table,

really copying a mahogany table of the time,

but made around 1800.

And I suspect that the carpenter,

your great-grandfather's friend on the estate,

probably found this, I don't know, in an old shed or something,

in slightly bad repair,

because there are various changes that have been made to it.

And if I lift this leaf here,

the leaf has been re-tipped.

Do you see what fantastic quality timber this is

and this is a very even-grained, rather dull bit of oak.

So it's been re-tipped

and then the whole of this leaf is a later replacement.

And the other thing is that the legs have been cut down at some point.

And with a bit of ingenuity and some castors that I suspect were left

over from an old sofa, they've been put on to the bottom of the table.

So could well have been made around 1800 here,

by the estate carpenter of the time, but then 100 years later,

has been sort of, had renewed life breathed into it.

So this is part of Lyme's history

-but it's also part of your family history.

-Yes, it is.

-And do you remember this table?

-Totally.

I've eaten every meal off it and done all my homework at it.

You know, this is our living room, everyday table,

it has a place right at the heart of our family.

We're downsizing and one thing and another,

and I just always felt it should come home to Lyme.

So in 2011 we came to Lyme Park and asked them, you know,

would they be interested in the table coming home from whence

it was made because we believe it is made from Lyme Park oak.

Well, let's look at the oak.

It is oak and it's a gorgeous cut of oak too.

Look at these wonderful...

Look at the medullary rays here, this iridescent figuring.

This is a great cut of oak.

Look at the life and colour to it.

Where is it used now?

Well, that's the interesting thing.

Because it's lived here ever since 2011,

the joy for me was when I found out that it is now in use

on a daily basis in the administrator's office.

So the National Trust people actually do their work on it.

It's a table that's moved with the times.

After that wonderful story, it's worth less than £100.

-Yes, absolutely.

-But the story for me is everything.

-I know, yes, thank you.

-Thank you so much for telling me all about it.

You're welcome, thank you.

Well, your cup and saucer begs an awful lot of questions,

for the simple reason that the handle isn't where

it should be, it's actually in there.

Let's put it to one side. OK.

And let's have a look at the saucer

because, you know, it's in something of a state, all right.

So what I need to know is, does this cup and saucer have a story to tell?

It does indeed, yes.

This was given to my fourth great-grandmother,

Lady Sarah Lennox,

who was the daughter of the second Duke of Richmond.

The Duchess of Brunswick gave it to her daughter, Queen Caroline,

so George IV's wife, and it was given to her probably around 1820.

We've had some name-dropping on this programme

but that takes the biscuit, that really does.

So, I mean, everybody behind you is wondering

whether they should have curtsied to you when you appeared on set.

Well, I am actually Princess Diana's sixth cousin.

-Are you really?

-Yes.

-Well...

And is there anybody else in Bolton that has the same title?

-That's what we need to know.

-Not that I know of.

-OK, so what we're looking at here is a bit of a relic, yes?

-Yes.

I love something that's...

I mean, especially when you look at the script on that.

I mean, that looks as though it was written in around about 1830, 1840.

And it all tends to fit because, you know, when you get a story

like that, you look at the piece and before you know the story

you know that this probably dates from about 1820

because it's a cabinet cup.

Let's just show it in a better light.

-If you could afford something like this, you had money, OK.

-Right.

Would it have been part of a set?

Yes, it would have been part of a set and it is for coffee.

And if we turn it upside down, the story is collaborated

by the fact that this has got a mark for the Furstenberg factory.

-Right.

-So we're in Germany,

but it is a typical cabinet cup of that period.

And have you been tempted to have it properly restored?

I have thought about it, yes.

Well, I think you, you know, it is one of those things that

would probably benefit from it as long as it's not over-restored.

So it does, you know, on this programme,

bring us to the question of, "What's it worth?"

And I think really, I think by having it restored, then the chances

are that it would be worth about 400 or £500.

But it's got far more going for it than money.

Right, yeah, I totally agree.

So, all I can say is, thank you so much, milady.

-Thank you.

-Thank you very much.

350 years ago, when this portrait was painted,

clearly this was a young man worth knowing.

He's got a military baton, he's got a breastplate.

So how did you come about him?

An antique dealer brought it to me to clean and I did that

-and then I bought it from him.

-To clean? What are you, a restorer?

I am, I'm afraid, yes. So I bought it.

Would you like to tell us how much it cost?

About 850. That was back in about 1978, perhaps.

Let's get back to who this man might be, because he's got a baton,

he's got a breastplate, he looks, I don't know, I'm being a bit

sort of subjective here, he looks like a young aristo about town.

I would say he's what, 15 or 16 years old?

Painted in the 1670s, he looks a bit like the illegitimate

son of Charles II possibly, the Duke of Monmouth.

-Hint, hint, yes.

-Although I don't think it is him.

-Oh, right.

-But he's got a very distinctive face

and what is lovely for 17th century portraiture, which can be

a bit hard on the eye, it's a very yielding, attractive face.

It's very likeable, yeah.

He's very likeable and then because he's got a baton and because he's

got a breastplate, I bet you he's someone of considerable influence,

probably from one of the great aristocratic families of the period.

And so, how about the artist as well,

so what did you think as you began to clean this picture?

Well, the easy choice

if you don't have access to a lot of information would be Lely.

Well Sir Peter Lely is the artist who comes to mind. Why?

Because he's the court painter around Charles II,

when this picture was painted.

He carries on, he takes the baton as it

were from Van Dyck as the leading court painter.

But I don't know if it is by Lely

because Lely has a slightly more distinctive

way of handling his drapery, wouldn't you think, as a restorer?

Could be that then he maybe just came along

and tickled up the end of it or something.

There were other people working on it.

You're absolutely right.

Lely had people who helped him

and we're beginning to map out the different styles.

There was a woman who worked with him, Mary Beale,

there was another artist called William Wissing.

I don't know at this stage

but I would suspect it is by one of the assistants in Lely's studio.

Well, the hands aren't terribly good.

I think you're so right to pick up on that because I think the

face is very beguiling, I think the drapery is quite well done.

The hand, the right hand looks a bit like the fin of a fish, really.

-Yes.

-But let's not get too hung up on that because I think

it's a really lovely baroque image

and, you know, life is cruel in the art world.

If you've got a good-looking sitter,

they are an awful lot more easy to sell than their plain counterparts

-and we've got here a rather radiantly attractive young man.

-Yes.

Well, I was certainly glad to buy it, you know.

Does this have a carved frame?

It has a carved frame,

the sort of thing that they would have made in the early 18th century.

So what we're dealing with is an artist we don't know the name of

but it's very closely, warmly in the orbit of the great Sir Peter Lely.

If it has a good early carved frame,

this is a supremely decorative baroque image,

and as a result, I think that one can give it a very good valuation.

-You ended up paying £850.

-Yes.

All those decades later, with a good carved frame,

I would value it as a Studio Of Lely piece,

around about actually the age of the sitter, 15 or £16,000.

Gasp, as they say. Right, good.

-Thank you for that.

-Pleasure.

I know a Swedish glass designer, Goran Warff,

who says that glass eats light.

And I mean this is just sucking the light out of the sun

and glowing in a way that is magical, isn't it?

It is beautiful, yes, I think it is.

How long have you known it?

My parents bought it in Malta.

They went on a holiday about 1970, I think.

They went on a tour of this factory

which was run by an Englishman called Michael Harris.

They brought that back with them and got him to sign it on the bottom.

It's a beautiful thing and Michael Harris is an important man

in terms of glass-making because he took British glass-making from

the traditional cut sherry glass into the studio glass movement.

He was Britain's first studio glass-maker.

So every single thing that he made, he regarded as a unique object.

You didn't buy sets of six of Michael Harris's

work at the Mdina glass works that he founded on Malta in 1968.

But he was very unlucky, Michael, in that Dom Mintoff had just

been elected the President of Malta and he had basically told

the Brits to leave. And the Harrises left to come back to England.

They were forced out, so he had this short three year period.

Michael was very reluctant to sign.

He didn't like it because he figured what we make is the union of us all.

We are all behind this,

so to put my name on it is wrong and presumptuous.

However the only way Michael would sign stuff is if you were

standing in Mdina at the time with money in your hand and you'll

say, "I'll buy it if you'll sign it."

And so you're absolutely right

is that this has the signature, Michael Harris, Mdina Glass, Malta.

-And that's rare.

-Is it?

So you've got £150 art object,

but it's £150 art object with a signature

which multiplies that value by a factor of ten,

making it worth between 1,000 and 1,500 quid.

Brilliant, it's brilliant, absolutely brilliant.

Well done, Mother.

THEY LAUGH

I'll let her go when we get home.

She's 95 and she's still going strong,

so she'll be pleased to hear it.

It's a lovely early pram.

I mean, look at the style of that.

I mean, it's almost like a real, proper baby carriage.

You know, we can see where we get the name from now.

What's your link to it?

My mum bought this in 2004.

She bought it from an antique shop and the story was that it was

used in Buckingham Palace and it came from Queen Victoria's reign.

We were just interested to know if there was any truth in that, really.

Well, there is this lovely document here attached to the handle.

Yes, one of 22 apparently, ordered by Queen Victoria

for use by visiting dignitaries with their children.

And it was only really in the 19th century that

the idea of a mode of transport for your children

began to be widely used

and it was in fact Queen Victoria that made the whole baby carriage,

or perambulator, really fashionable and it became the thing to do.

But this little piece of paper goes on to say that it was used

only for use indoors,

not for outside use.

And so that you could wheel it up a corridor and then you could

push it from the other end without having to turn it round.

So what makes me think that that could be true?

Well, there are two things to say.

First of all, is the wheels.

I can see that that would work.

They're roughly the same size, whereas on an outdoor carriage,

you tended to have them one big one and one small one.

So the other thing I would say about it being used for indoors,

is that these handles are actually very close

-to the body of the carriage, aren't they?

-Mm-hm.

You know, you wouldn't need a high, extended handle

if you were just wheeling them up and down the corridors.

You know, the clues are stacking up in favour of the internal use.

What I'd love to see is a really great coat of arms on the side

and the document says that there was one but it was taken off.

Well, that's handy, isn't it?

The perambulator itself is certainly of quality.

You've only got to look at the way that it's constructed.

The bad news is that I cannot confirm that story.

-Now, when it comes to value, it's a 300 to £500 object.

-Yes.

If the story can be substantiated,

I reckon it could get into four figures.

Wow, wow. That's amazing.

-Are these members of the family?

-Yes.

Equally pleased. Good.

THEY LAUGH

Thanks very much.

How wonderful if that pram really was used in Buckingham Palace.

Let's hope the owner can find some clues as to its regal past.

Will Farmer is back with me. And, Will, we've been talking

about Christmas presents in these glorious Christmassy surroundings.

We were talking about the Edwardian era,

but let's bring it a bit more up-to-date.

Now, this I remember from my childhood.

Oh, so do I. Good Lord. And I think what we are surrounded by

are things that I sort of call the dawn of merchandising.

This is where it all starts to change for the manufacturers,

the promoters and we've got things here linked to television.

You pointed straight in at the Magic Roundabout.

Well, those of us watching and those of us here of a certain age,

we'll remember this with great affection.

Oh, I do, I could sing the theme tune, but I'll spare you that,

but, yes, absolutely.

And what you've got there really is the absolute

Rolls-Royce of their toys and their production.

I mean, this was called the Playground Set and do you know,

this was launched in 1969, it was £13 in 1969.

To put that into context,

-that's equivalent to about £200 in today's money.

-Wow.

You could actually buy everything on there as an individual,

you know, and that's the idea.

Get the children hooked in, start to spread the thought,

get the parents spending more money.

Yeah, been there, done that with my own children.

What would this be worth now?

-It was obviously so expensive at the time.

-Well, absolutely.

I mean, if you look at this as a complete full set,

today one of those in unplayed, sort of mint, near mint

and boxed condition, is going to be upwards of £500.

And what about the rest of what we've got here?

Well, we've got some great stuff.

Here, of course, you know, the die-cast toys,

coming on the back of those really great programmes, your Thunderbirds,

your Captain Scarlets, and these just hooked into kids' imaginations

like you would never believe, because these were accessible.

I mean, if you look at FAB1 there,

it's one of those toys everyone remembers,

Lady Penelope's limousine with Parker up front.

And as a child in 1967, if you went out with 15 shillings and 11 pence,

so about 80p, there or thereabouts, you could take that home.

And the interesting thing is today, you've got to think again,

it's all about condition.

An FAB1 is worth, in really good mint condition, 400 or £500 now.

Play-worn, maybe £100.

But it was the die-cast market that rocketed,

but these are the toys that kids hook on to.

They took them out into the garden, played with them, went

on adventures with their brothers, their sisters, their friends.

But it's about that idea of dragging it all out

to make sure your parents stick with that programme, stick

with that television series and make sure that you just keep spending.

Doctor Who, I spot back here. As popular now as it was then.

Well, indeed.

It is an absolute jewel in the crown of the BBC, isn't it?

It's one of these programmes, it's the longest running sci-fi programme

and it's something again that just captures everybody's imagination.

The Daleks were first introduced in episode two,

in a programme called Dead Planet

and from that it just went crazy.

Now you've got to bear in mind that there's no one company that

actually manufactured anything to do with Doctor Who.

There were hundreds of companies,

everyone all over was producing their own interpretations.

Probably the rarest thing we've got there on show is that

Dodge The Daleks game, which was actually launched 1963, 1964.

If anyone out there's got one of those,

today you're looking at a board game worth 200 to £300.

Amazing, Thanks, Will. Brings back a few memories.

Oh, totally.

And shortly on the programme we'll reveal which object fetched

the highest price when it was sold after appearing on the Roadshow.

But first, back to our visit here this summer, when Marc Allum was

shown a kitchen set which was given as a magical Christmas present.

A while ago I filmed a full-size kitchen on the Antiques Roadshow and

it was an English Rose kitchen from the 1950s, but what do we have here?

We have what really is kind of the equivalent of it

really in miniature, isn't it? So what's the story behind it?

It was Christmas time... It was best Christmas box.

We used to have something, you know,

a pillow case filled up with small things,

books and things like that

and then we had the grand tie and that was it.

-This was your big Christmas present, was it?

-Yeah, yeah.

And what sort of age would you have been, can you remember?

-I'd say about five, five or six.

-About five.

Now this would have been quite expensive,

this collection in the 1950s.

-You got this all at the same time, did you?

-Yeah.

Well, there is a lot of play value in it and I particularly love

the Amersham toys range here, really lovely, very much of its time.

And do you know, what were your other over-riding

feelings about Christmas?

Were there any real stories that you remember that really

encapsulate Christmas for you?

Yes, what used to happen is the day before Christmas, my mum used

to ask us what did we want for Christmas and she would say,

"But before you go any further," she said, she'd take us to the fireplace

and we had an open coal fire, but we didn't know there was a pipe

that let the air through for the coals to light outside.

And my dad had gone outside without us knowing and we'd be shouting up

the chimney saying, "Father Christmas, are you there?"

-And we'd hear this, "Ho-ho-ho."

-Really?

Yeah, yeah, just wondered. Thought, "Gosh, this is magic."

And I used to sort of look at my sisters and think,

"Wow, you know, he really is there."

And we'd try and look up and try and see him.

Then we'd shout up then. We had one toy that we were supposed to say

and, you know, it could have been a teddy bear or it could have been

a doll, but that one thing.

Then Father Christmas would shout back and say,

"Right, you've got to be very good then and go to bed tonight

"and sleep, otherwise I won't come."

So then that night we'd run upstairs,

-cover up and wait till he comes. It was exciting.

-That's brilliant.

That's a lovely, lovely story.

Well, this was obviously magic to you too.

To be honest with you, in terms of putting a value on it,

the Amersham toy range is a lovely thing.

To a good retro collector,

someone who's really interested in things of this style, it's a

real gem and I think, you know, that's probably worth around

about 150, £200 to a collector.

And I think probably collectively there's about 300 or £400

on the table here. I can see the fact that you still have it all

and you've still kept it, it means a great deal to you, doesn't it?

-Yeah, never part with it, yeah.

-Lovely. Thank you ever so much.

-OK, thank you.

-And Merry Christmas.

-Right.

Wow, how wacky is this?

I mean, it's extraordinary, it looks like a snake,

I mean, you'd smoke yourself dizzy with that.

Is it something that you smoke after dinner of an evening?

Not recently, no.

So is it something you inherited or something you bought?

It belongs to my mum and she inherited it from my father's

great aunt who was a governess.

She travelled, in particular, across to America and also

round this country, looking after the children of different families.

That's all I know. It belonged to her and she left it to my dad.

So you don't know where she picked it up, really?

I know for a time that she lived in Staffordshire,

but I don't really know very much else about that.

She was quite a formidable woman, that's all I know.

Well, this style of thing hails from Staffordshire.

I mean, it's Prattware

and that was established in Staffordshire in the 1770s.

But it was also a style that was adopted by other factories.

-And I actually think this one's from Yorkshire.

-Right.

It's a fantastic thing.

Some people might call it a puzzle pipe, but it's just

a novelty pipe because a puzzle pipe would have other holes,

so it was funny, the smoke would come out of a hole somewhere else.

I have tried to blow it actually

and I think something's crawled in there and died.

Quite possibly, yes.

I can see some ageing there and I think that's heat.

This style of thing is from about 1800.

And a thing of this complexity remaining intact,

I find extraordinary.

I love these ochres and blue, typical.

Do you want to know how much it's worth?

I'm sure my mum would.

Well, normal pipes of this type, straight ones are about

20, 30, £40, sometimes they're signed.

This novelty pipe, these proportions, this condition,

those lovely colours, the ochre and blue,

I'd say 300 to £500.

Fantastic. Thank you very much.

This Santa comes from Hong Kong in 1961.

My husband and I were touring the Far East and working

in Hong Kong at Christmas time, so this was a Christmas gift.

It's good old Father Christmas. Where does he come from?

It's my mum's.

She bought him back in the early 1950s,

-off Bird's Custards for, she thinks, two and six.

-Right.

And then he's travelled around the world with us

cos we lived in the States for a while.

So he's been out to California, then New York and then back to England.

He's quite something, isn't he?

Yes, he's lovely, he's lovely.

TOY PLAYS JINGLE BELLS

And as you travelled round the world in these hot

places at Christmas time, did you have custard

with your Christmas pudding on Christmas Day in this jug?

Yes, well, white sauce. White sauce with brandy.

SHE LAUGHS

Yes, he's been used every Christmas.

So it's a pottery jug,

made in a factory in Staffordshire.

Have you heard of the St Claus factory?

-No, there isn't one surely.

-No, I'm only joking.

So what's the tune?

# Jingle bells, jingle bells... #

-And then all over again.

-I recognise it.

-Jingle Bells.

-Do you love it?

-Yes. Oh, yes. We use him every Christmas now.

Well, worth, I don't know, 20 or £30,

-but to your family history, priceless.

-Exactly, yes.

Very true.

-And so he's kept in the attic now?

-Yes, I'm afraid so.

Ah, but you're mother and daughter here, you could have him out.

But never forgotten him, never forgotten him, though, have we?

And do you think you might be tempted to get him out

if you knew he was worth 200 to £300?

THEY LAUGH

Well, maybe.

Maybe not.

Santa, I'm putting you back in the box.

These people don't love you very much at all.

Santa, you deserve better.

This brooch should come with a sign saying,

"If you wear me, I'll make you chuckle,"

because when I opened this brooch,

it was the first thing I did, was chuckle.

I think it's delightful. Tell me its journey.

I believe it was bought in the Bahamas for my mother

by my father and probably about the 1970s.

So, I mean, this is quite a brave brooch to buy your wife,

-do you think?

-Perhaps, yes.

-And it's very unusual.

-Yes.

And in fact, these are called novelty brooches,

for that very fact.

And you say it was bought in the '70s.

Well, in the '60s, very much the period of the novelty brooch.

I mean, you had all the big jewellery houses,

you had Van Cleef, Kaczynski,

Cartier, David Webb,

all these different houses were all making novelty brooches.

I think because it was a fun period, you know, the '60s, people

were having fun, and this to me is a beautiful example of that period.

It's more sort of '60s,

so it probably was just a little bit older than when he first bought it.

I think it looks a European manufacture.

I love the head, with the way that you've got all the feathers.

Yeah, I know, they're beautiful, aren't they?

It is beautifully made, isn't it? And it is all real.

You know, you've got this wonderful collar here with the little

diamonds, you've got rubies and sapphires

and you've got this lovely pearl.

It does amuse me that it's only got one eye.

I know. I noticed that as well.

I think that's, I think

the goldsmith's having a bit of a laugh here, isn't he?

And, you know, I think it deserves being called, having a name.

What shall we call him? You name him.

He looks like Tweetie Pie.

THEY LAUGH

That's a good name.

That's a good name. Do you wear it?

No. I don't at all.

But I think you should

because it's going to make you chuckle, I think, when you wear it.

-Yes, yes.

-You know, at auction, I would say it's in the region

of about £1,500 to £2,000.

Is it? Excellent.

Well, thank you for bringing Tweetie Pie in.

Yes, thank you very much for seeing it, that's lovely. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Well, we've had a lot of people in from the locality

with their treasures for valuation, but this piece has

come from much further away. And in a sense, it's coming

home for the day because, Lord Newton,

this is your ancestral home.

That's right, yes.

My family lived here for 550 years,

till 1946, when my grandfather gave Lyme to the National Trust.

So what are your personal memories of this piece?

How has it survived in the family?

Well, some of the contents were removed by my grandfather

when he gave Lyme away and it passed to my father

-and then has come down to me now.

-OK.

Well, when I saw it, obviously the first thing that attracted me

was the use of minerals, hard-stones, in conjunction

with silver, to form this delicious handle, because we've two minerals.

We've banded agate and then we've got the use of carnelian, these

two inverted balusters conjoined by a fluted knop,

mounted with silver.

But you know, this is a dagger.

But it's terribly elegant, it's actually

-so finely made that it couldn't really be used in anger.

-Right.

This very much a sort of a dress dagger.

How old do you think it is?

I mean, is there any family tradition?

The family tradition is that it belonged to King Charles I, although

we believe that it was about a century earlier that it was created.

-OK.

-But maybe that's wrong.

Yeah, well, there's elements of truth.

If I actually slide the sheath back, indeed there is the name,

in Latin, Carolus, which is Charles, on the blade.

But I have to ask myself, is it Charles I,

because Charles was a very common name in the 16th century.

Of course, yes.

It was indeed. I've conferred with colleagues as well.

We think this is a 16th-century piece

that would have been used by a noble.

Quite where, specifically, I'm not sure

because its manufacture is almost certainly Italy, so it could

have been made in Italy, found its way here and was something of a sort

of presentation piece, something that would become a family treasure.

But of course, we don't really know, do we?

The true history's lost in the mists of time.

-Indeed, absolutely.

-Yeah.

So we're looking at a piece that's a symbol really of a man's wealth,

his elegance and his refinement.

You think of the clothes they wore at court in the 16th century,

-well, this would just go a bomb with that.

-Yes.

Let's have a look at the whole thing. There we go.

The blade's just had its tip knocked off but shows lovely wear

and tear, commensurate with its age.

But it holds a little secret, doesn't it,

the little bi-knife, just pull that out.

And before the regular use of cutlery provided for you,

you would carry your own little bi-knife.

What a great thing to own, yeah.

Yeah, I'm very fortunate, yes.

Yeah, so the link to Charles I we're going to have to accept,

a little bit tenuous, but, you know, look at it.

It's a serious European work of art.

The lapidary work is absolutely fabulous and in the sunshine,

the colours of the natural mineral and the banding, is just gorgeous.

So what about value? Have you got it well-insured?

-Sounds a bit of a cliche question, but...

-It is insured, yes.

It is insured, right.

Well, I think an auction estimate would have to be, considering

its provenance, between £15,000 and £25,000.

Really? Yes.

It's very, very rare.

Perhaps I need to insure it more.

Thank you very much indeed.

It's a very interesting account. Thank you.

How wonderful that dagger came back to Lyme Park for our Roadshow.

Now shortly we'll be unveiling our dates for a chance for you to

meet our Roadshow experts next year.

And be warned, coming to a roadshow may seriously affect your wealth.

It certainly did for these owners who, after their moment in the

Roadshow spotlight this year, went on to sell their treasured items.

Take for example a visitor to our Bristol show at Ashton Court,

who brought along a lovely Delftware posset pot which our specialist

John Sandon valued at £4,500 in June this year.

There's a funny story with this pot as well.

In my family, I joke with them that when I die,

I'd like to be cremated and my ashes put in this.

But now, if this goes out and they hear the valuation, I'll

probably get chucked in the garden and they'll probably cash it in.

Instead, the owner had a more practical use for his pot

and sold it for exactly John's valuation,

investing the money in setting up his own business.

Good luck to him.

Bought on holiday in Cornwall for £1,000, 25 years ago,

this Paul Feiler painting proved to be quite a souvenir.

So that was a big purchase for a holiday purchase.

Yeah, but we like paintings.

There's a story behind it, in that my husband had to

phone his office and find out if they'd had a good month or not.

LAUGHTER

So they'd had a good month and we decided to buy it.

We were told by the owner she needed a new central heating system

and it wasn't a pipe dream. She sold her picture

and after the hammer fell at a whopping £25,000,

she found she could afford a luxurious re-fit.

This solid gold Martinique medal was

awarded in 1809 during the Napoleonic Wars.

It made a return to the Roadshow 20 years after it was first seen

and valued, for £8,000.

The medal itself has increased in value quite dramatically

and today, if this medal came up on its own,

it would probably sell for £35,000.

On hearing the new valuation, the owner decided to sell at auction.

It reached an amazing £38,000.

English Heritage were so taken with this old railway signage,

which once adorned the now defunct local railway station,

they agreed to pay Paul's valuation, £300,

and it's returned home to Bolsover Castle.

And finally, remember this novelty 19th century money-collecting gadget,

which had spent years in a box at the owner's home in Edinburgh?

It's called the coasting bank and obviously that's what it is.

Now, see if we can demonstrate it.

It would have had a piece of string in the back, which you've got.

-Oh, you did it.

-And there it went.

Well, it went back to its roots in America

and sold for a staggering quarter of a million dollars

or around £170,000.

Now, that's what I call a good investment.

Whoa.

So the Roadshow could be your road to riches,

so make sure you come and see us in 2016.

Getting us under way is a visit to the impressive Tewkesbury Abbey,

truly a jewel of Gloucestershire.

Audley End in Essex will make a fantastic

backdrop for our Roadshow team.

It's among the finest gardens in Europe,

join us amidst the blooms at Arley Hall and Gardens in Cheshire.

Two moated manors welcome us next year.

The exquisite Baddesley Clinton in Warwickshire.

And the lavishly restored Ightham Mote in Kent

will take centre stage for our June visit.

This property at Caversham in Reading is home to

BBC Monitoring and its written archives.

We'll hope to see you there in June.

Up to the Lake District next

for a visit to Holker Hall and Gardens in Cumbria.

To East Yorkshire, where Burton Constable near Hull

will welcome experts and visitors alike.

For fans of industrial buildings,

join us at the New Lanark World Heritage Site,

magnificently set on the banks of the Clyde in Scotland.

A Welsh wonder, Pembroke Castle is an exciting

and dramatic setting for our visit in September.

One of our most idyllic locations next year,

with its views over the River Fall is Trelissick, near Truro, in Cornwall.

And finally, to the University of London

and the Art Deco splendour of Senate House.

It promises to be a special show.

If you'd like to send us advance information about your treasure,

ahead of your visit, drop us a note, with photographs, to our website.

So hopefully we'll see you next year.

Who knows, perhaps in our tea tent, as we roll

out our roadshows for 2016 and all the details are on the website.

I hope you've enjoyed our special Christmas celebration.

I'd like to thank the team here at Lyme Park for welcoming us back.

And as for you, enjoy the rest of your Christmas,

have a happy New Year and hopefully see you in 2016. Bye-bye.