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Antiques Roadshow Season 48 Episode 11
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00:00the roadshow has made its way to Bedfordshire and the grounds of Shuttleworth house and as
00:08our visitors make their way to meet our experts I've got the opportunity to zip round the event
00:12in roadshow style on an antique bike that used to belong to Dorothy Shuttleworth former owner
00:19of this grand house this is the ladies safety cycle so-called because it's one of the first
00:26models that had two wheels the same size before this people are riding on penny farthings and I've
00:34ridden on one of those I know how precarious they are this it has to be said oh it's still quite a
00:40challenging ride and there are challenges aplenty in store for our experts as they examine the
00:46treasures our visitors have brought along today loved it I bought it a car boat two pounds I
00:52believe that there were two crafts used in the film is that correct one of them Sean Connery sat in keep
00:59your memories of it because whatever happens it will be sold absolutely brilliant and the
01:06expressions are similar to mine when you start bringing them out the bag welcome to the antiques
01:13roadshow
01:35it's sort of a bit incongruous really so here we are in front of this wonderful mid-victorian mansion
01:42and then we've got this sort of incredible pair of fiberglass panels which are starkly modern geometric
01:49metallic I'm guessing your home must be a sort of palace to modern art therefore no I bought this
01:57because I just moved and I wanted to do up the kitchen and it just went perfectly in my kitchen
02:01so you bought it when I'm curious uh mid-1990s loved it um but I bought it a car boot two pounds I want to
02:10know where this car boot sale is that they've got stuff like this I want to be there okay so what I'm
02:14looking at in particular this RH monogram in there and when you're looking at sort of geometric panels
02:21like this and you find RH you might also find the name Ron Hitchens and that's who produced this so
02:29Ron Hitchens is a fascinating man and he's his work is something that's very close to my heart he's sort
02:35of the outsider in a way so he was born in 1926 and by this in 1940s in the 1950s he was trying to
02:42basically make a success of himself so he started off actually making and selling clothing so fashionable
02:49clothing and then he sort of moved more into art and there's something very much about having
02:55things to do with his hands he was endlessly creative but perhaps his best known and most celebrated
03:01form are tiles now these are quite large what he's better known for a sort of small two inch by two
03:07inch terracotta tiles which he would hand carve with a knife and other tools and implement even using
03:12things like ballpoint pens to sort of put these holes and these apertures inside it and he
03:19produced thousands maybe even hundreds of thousands of these things these are much larger so where
03:26does it hang now it's on top of the wardrobe if i saw this at auction today you would look at around
03:34maybe 800 to a thousand pounds that's a big improvement on two isn't it it's a massive improvement
03:40one and two pounds still love it it just doesn't go anywhere right thank you very much thank you
03:47great thing about silver in order for it to remain and not to be cast aside or heaven forbid melted
04:01down is if it's useful now perhaps you'll be able to tell me have you ever used it no no never used
04:08no but you know what it's for don't you yes i do how did you find out i was cleaning it as a child
04:15and i realized it was sort of hinged and then realized that the top came off and you've brought
04:20in what appears to be an urn but if we open it up and drop the front down we can see that in actual
04:27fact it's a pocket nutmeg grater and it was made in london in 1804 by the firm of phipps and robinson who
04:35made such small things and it's in remarkably good condition it's a pocket nutmeg grater because it was
04:42designed to go in your pocket you'd put your nutmeg you'd keep it in there and then grate it upside down
04:50on on your food in your drinks there's a little couple of little details to point out the hinge here
04:56in the base yes has a pin in the middle which is made of brass and there's another brass pin in the
05:02hinge at the lid brass is harder than silver and it was made like that they do have a very strong
05:10collectors following nutmeg graters normally they're not in as fine condition as this and so i think if
05:16it came up for sale i think on a good day you may well have to pay 600 pounds maybe even a little bit
05:23more for it very nice isn't it yeah lovely thank you but i'm not selling it
05:34um collection or obsession i don't know i mean i'm a collector so i know what it's like but
05:39how did this start then when i was about five or six i remember distinctly my mother had this on the
05:45mantelpiece right and my father who was a smoker assured me one day put a cigarette in here and
05:53smoke came out of the ears and i was absolutely amazed certainly for all of you stood around what
05:58you probably don't realize is these are what are called smoking heads of course these days we're all
06:02well aware of the dangers of smoking but it's from a time people used to smoke and this was what it was
06:08about what you've got here you've stuck to one factory that's right correct schaefer and walter
06:13sure absolutely and i mean you can see that characteristically by the manufacturer and what
06:18they're doing with these brilliant expressions and these brilliant faces the idea is everybody that
06:23you would put your cigarette in the mouths and it would all come out the head out the ears out the
06:28sides whatever i mean these are real fun things absolutely the breadth of their work is huge i mean
06:34you know the output but some of these are really really rare so where are you finding them i find them
06:40on the online their export volume was amazing absolutely incredible so america as well as europe
06:47well america mostly and of course i see you've you know you've even extended the collecting into the
06:52figures as well but i mean look at him for character i mean it says tennis at the bottom and there he is
06:57with his pipe and his tennis racket ready for a good game but i mean just brilliant they're so much fun
07:02aren't they they've certainly are giving me a lot of enjoyment 40 years ago these were 20 pounds 25
07:08pounds they're not today no how many of these have you got in total around about 50. i'm going to take
07:14a mean average i think you've got somewhere between five and six thousand pounds worth yeah yeah to see so
07:22many schaefer and walter all in one place love them absolutely brilliant and the expressions nearly as
07:28similar to mine when you start bringing them out the bag
07:44i'm looking at a rather interesting piece of paper with some cutouts in it and a sun in the middle of it
07:53before i go into exactly what it might be what i want to know is what your connection is with it
07:58this is i suppose a family heirloom yeah um i inherited it from my grandmother who died in 1974
08:07and i've sort of hung on to it never really knowing anything about it so i'm desperate to learn it's a
08:14perpetual calendar it's such a lovely object and the more you look at it the more you see in there you have
08:21got sunrise and sunset times you've got the signs of the zodiac you've got the dates you've got the moon
08:32phases and you've got year dates in here and the whole thing just looks 18th century to me
08:41the maker's name here satches made in norwich but i do not know a maker called satches in norwich but the
08:52conundrum is that in this little window at the top it says 1824 and that doesn't look as if it's the
09:00right date and i know that these paper discs which is what it's made of where they run over and above
09:09each other can be changed and i just wonder whether that has been changed at some point because
09:16everything to me screams george iii so that's 1760 through to 1820 but i think it's in the early bit i
09:24think this is an 18th century piece rather than a 19th century does that affect anything to do with
09:29your history now well i think that does tie in quite nicely with the fact that a predecessor james oakes
09:37the banker of berrison edmunds he was born in 1742 and died in 1827 and this is the sort of thing that
09:45he would have had to be honest it would have been absolutely he would have been exactly a gentleman
09:51scientist which is what this would have appealed to at that stage in the in the 1760s you had a
09:58phenomenon emerging in british society called the gentleman scientist or the natural philosopher as
10:04they were called and it would have been something for somebody who was a hobby scientist somebody who
10:11was interested in the weather in the seasons in natural phenomena i am now going to turn it around
10:20because actually we do want to see the back of it because this is wonderful so this is how you
10:26would revolve the decorated face on the front but that is the one that moves most easily and that is
10:34because i think that that's a replacement i think that it should have an 18th century series of dates
10:40in there not a 19th century series so it should be 17 something not 18 something okay have you translated
10:47the latin whatever you do or say do it prudently speak it carefully and speak it well the end do you
10:55love it i sent a note through to my daughter because she couldn't remember what i brought so i sent her
11:02a photograph of it and i said a note at the end you know keep your memories of it because whatever happens
11:09it will be sold all right well um if it's going to be sold i'll give you an auction value i would put
11:16it at between 800 and 1200 pounds great so thank you for bringing it in thank you so much
11:25well having heard what hillary had to say about it and talking it through i think it's something which
11:30you know we'll probably hang on to now i only said that to my daughter in in jest it's more of the
11:35background and what it was used for and the fact that it probably would have been actually handled by
11:41my five greats grandfather you've brought in a very stylish collection of mid-century lighting
11:57i have to say i love them i think you like them as well i do tell me more well just things i've seen
12:04and just had to pick up really i appreciate the design of them they're all lamps do have a purpose
12:12and yet they're different solutions and different styles to do the same thing really well they all
12:17make a real statement don't they're all very stylish and rather handily we've got one from the 50s
12:23one from the 60s and one from the 70s and it's not basic better best for a change so we'll start on the
12:29end here with this very elegant standard lamp from the 1950s metal shade there and a teak column and
12:38base and then with this sort of anodized metal cap and mount to the base as well it was made by a
12:45company called merchant adventurers an english company who were very active in the 1950s mostly
12:52and they're moving on to the 60s and then i have to say i love this this is designed by someone called
12:58peter nelson the cylinder is a real mid 60s shape it really is and here it's used in the shade in the
13:07column also in the in the column there along with the the cube of the the lighting box so you control
13:13it from there and then you've got the disc base like that so it's a really architectural piece of
13:18lighting and in fact the company was called architectural lighting and then we're moving away
13:23from britain to spain okay and the 70s and just look at this just after the moon landings and we've
13:31got something which could be based on an astronaut's helmet made by a company called tramo and tramo
13:37were an interesting firm by the 70s they're really getting involved in design and they're working with
13:43big name designers and this is a really good piece of that design and just the kind of thing
13:49that people like at the moment it's very i suppose the word would be funky it's a statement it really
13:54is so where are you getting these here and there to be honest okay and what sort of prices are we
13:59talking about 30 or so pounds i think it was is a little while ago um that was tenner and two pound
14:05fifty from the car two pound fifty wow this kind of thing is very much bang on trend at the moment and
14:11people like lighting and i think for a combined auction price we're looking at the best part of a
14:18thousand pounds lovely so that's not a bad return at all yeah they will continue to light up your life
14:25thank you thank you for bringing them thanks very much
14:32while our visitors enjoy the historic vehicles on display here outside the house i've come to another
14:38part of the estate to look into shuttleworth's connection with the early days of flying
14:45the collection house here at the shuttleworth aerodrome was started by richard shuttleworth in
14:49the early 20th century and it has all sorts of flying treasures dating back to the dawn of aviation
14:56from 1917 is the se-5 fighter plane designed to be stable and relatively easy to fly it proved to be one
15:04of the most successful fighter planes of the war and this one is believed to be the only original first
15:10world war aircraft still flying today that successfully destroyed an enemy aircraft
15:17and then there's this one probably my favorite the racy de haviland comet built to compete in the london
15:23to melbourne air race in 1934 and it won just over 11 000 miles in 71 hours really impressive for the time
15:32and no collection would be complete without probably the most iconic of british planes the spitfire
15:42and the best thing about this collection is that these aren't just stationary museum pieces
15:47they take to the skies still flown by skilled pilots
15:53and to keep them airworthy needs a team of dedicated specialists like head of engineering john munn
15:59the remarkable thing about all these planes john is you fly them all don't you yes we maintain and
16:05they're all kept airworthy and i'm privileged to fly all these airplanes as well i mean some of them
16:10i'd be a bit happier to fly than others i'm thinking about this one this is the blerio this is the
16:15blerio yes the world's oldest flyable airplane so what does that date from 1909 yeah right at the birth
16:21of flight especially in europe and we have five edwardian machines so pre first world machines we
16:27fly here so when did you last go up in a couple of weeks ago really yes yes yeah we managed to have a
16:33very calm training week to get our pilots all up to speed and uh yeah just luck would have it had
16:39perfectly calm weather and it's an extraordinary collection isn't it it is and there there isn't a
16:44collection like this anywhere uh in terms of its breadth and certainly with all the cars motorbikes and
16:50traction engines steam engines there's nowhere like it in the world and what about replacement
16:55parts for these how do you how do you find them we have quite a bit in stores we trade with other
17:00museums and other places and collectors and but we also make a lot of spare parts ourselves now
17:07and then we go out to industry for some more specialist parts formula one industry we use a lot
17:12you use formula one for planes like these that's because they're used to very high quality
17:18and small batches which of course we need yeah and we're very lucky of course there's a lot of
17:23that kind of engineering done in the uk um which is something we should be more proud of really well
17:28thank you for telling me about the collection and good luck flying that thing rather you than me
17:32thank you
17:46this is a really extraordinary portrait the sitter is literally staring out at us with the most
18:03unflinching gaze i mean he really draws you in now it's signed jacket detail and i'm wondering how
18:12how this incredibly powerful portrait came to be yours i was a gentleman he's my uncle
18:20leon jacques de taille he was a self-taught painter when he died i was informed there was nothing in the
18:27flat but i said i don't think so i think there's quite a few paintings there so i flew out to geneva
18:33across the border to and see where he lived and the the flat was chocoblock with paintings on racks
18:40because it was in an inheritance everything had to be sold at auction because i have a sister
18:48so to be able to share it when it was that's the only way to do it so i went back for the auctions
18:54and i bought some paintings and drawings of his and this is one of them do we know who the sitter is
19:03it's himself it's himself it's a self-portrait what was it about this one that jumped out at you
19:09because it's it's leon it's him and he was young and because you've seen so much of his work
19:17do you know roughly when this might have been painted i think it was quite young now i think it
19:24might be 1949 or 1950. this is one of the most powerful self-portraits i've ever seen i'm totally
19:34drawn into it and to me it kind of encapsulates that period after the second world war where you
19:40have a generation of people of artists of writers of musicians of everyone who've grown up through the
19:47second world war who've experienced devastation trauma and to my mind this portrait really
19:53encapsulates that he was born in the 20s so he's he's in his late 20s here he's used a mixture of
20:04very clear definition to bring out the features of his face and those piercing eyes but then he's
20:12mixed that with the way his hair is done see the strokes here it's almost like he's taken the back
20:16of the paintbrush and scraped away just to highlight that pattern in his hair and then i think actually
20:25that the palette is so powerful because he's wearing this quite grey jacket it kind of feels like it
20:33represents his mindset and then you've got this very atmospheric background but then look at that light
20:39and then picking up sort of the detail the veins on his forehead but as i say everything comes back to
20:45these incredibly piercing eyes i think it's a masterful portrait and the fact that it's a self-portrait
20:53is even more powerful i think were this to come to auction i would put an estimate on this in the
21:00region of 800 to 1200 pounds i like it not everybody does i mean it's powerful you're sort of drawn into
21:07his eyes it's really extraordinary so there are certain watches that come along at the road show
21:22and i must admit i do have a bit of a soft spot for amiga seamasters it was one of the first watches i
21:29ever bought when i started dealing so they've always had quite a connection with me and my life and i've
21:36carried that through but what's the connection of this particular seamaster with you well this watch
21:41belonged to my mother she was uh german she lived in oldenburg just after the war obviously there were
21:50occupying forces in germany uh during that period of time and an american airman bestowed this watch
21:56to her on the promise that he would come and claim it at a later date and obviously claim her heart as
22:02well that never happened my father was then posted to germany where he met my mother working in the
22:09naffy he got very jealous of the watch because it was kind of marked my mum's sort of first infatuation
22:17effectively the american service personnel looking like david niven and he hid it and he hid it for
22:23most of their married life we've never really had it sort of you know confirm that the story is true
22:28but it'd be nice to know whether or not it actually you know date wise tallies with uh with with what
22:34actually went on amiga made the seamaster line as a rugged waterproof watch it had this lovely robust
22:42case and you can see it in this particular watch it's got these lovely heavy lugs this really robust
22:49case a screw down back a waterproof crown and this lovely really thick glass and it was really well
22:56protected the beautiful movement inside the movements are quite fine inside they're highly
23:01finished and that's sort of what drew me into these particular watches amiga produced them from about
23:08i think the seamasters were 1948s they first started the line so this is an early version it's got the
23:16calendar on it as well the date it's automatic so it will wind itself up as well we tend to see these
23:22exchange hands you know auction six to nine hundred pounds that sort of area but i would always
23:29recommend people would wear their watch do you think you'll wear it and bring it back into use i would
23:35like to put a leather strap on it and get it serviced and then my wife can wear it but as long as
23:41she doesn't run off with someone who looks like david niven so fantastic
23:56our experts are always on the lookout for antiques which combine beauty function and a deeper
24:01significance sometimes political in the 19th century the temperance movement was a moral and religious
24:08crusade rallying against the evils of alcohol eventually leading to prohibition in the us
24:15here at shuttleworth ceramics expert sirhat ahmet has spotted a sobering reminder of the movement
24:23now this isn't any old mug is it there's more to it than meets the eye so tell me your story about it
24:30well my understanding is that in 1842 my great-great-grandfather james oldham was working at the
24:38wedgewood factory after which opened the pottery whether he made it or not i don't know you may be
24:43able to give me more information these are known as loving cups and the idea was that you would share
24:49this with a loved one so this mug is all about temperance and so what was that it was about social
24:54reform social reformers felt that uh the use and sale of alcohol was about degradation of society
25:03and morals and they were mainly aimed at the working class trying to suggest to them that
25:09they should drink less be at home with the family more and work harder yeah why would we have something
25:16that was used for ceremonial purposes a loving cup which would have been filled with alcohol
25:22yeah with all these motifs of temperance and what i love about this and this is what i mean by there's
25:29more to it than meets the eye is if we look inside there's a little frog so if we have a look at the cup
25:37quickly we've got these panels showing here in two sections you know someone who hasn't taken the pledge
25:47and the downfall of family and society and and about values falling apart and then if you take the
25:55pledge it says that your life will be improved that was what it was all about and here's a lovely on the
26:02bottom of it a lovely emblem of of temperance industry and plenty so was this made by your grandfather
26:10we don't know we can't be sure yeah so if this was to come up at auction i think it would fetch around
26:18two to three hundred pounds okay but i think the social history the story that this piece tells
26:24about the potteries and the potters of that time is far more significant than the value thank you very
26:30much for bringing it in today thank you
26:42you've bought in this rather lovely quarter so no carved panel um what does it mean to you i'm a wood
26:49carver by trade and i i purchased this from the town of andal in a antique shop paid the princely sum of
26:57about 90 pounds for it that was in the 1980s about 88 you then did a lot of research on it and it sort
27:04of went a little bit of a journey of discovery yes yeah i found that it had actually come from the
27:10grocer's guild hall in london and it had survived a bombing in 1944 i think grocer's hall it's obviously
27:18one of the main major guilds in the city of london and originally when they were set up in the early 15th
27:23century you know they were they were responsible for all the spice trade all the spice coming into
27:27the city of london and you know they've been on the same site since then but it's gone through many
27:33many incarnations it was burnt down completely in the great fire of london 1666 and rebuilt it was
27:40demolished and rebuilt again several times but i think the the fourth hall was built in the 1890s
27:47which is probably when this dates from was that rebuild of the 1890s i would think so it's very
27:52sort of elizabethan sort of 16th 17th century in style and it's this what we call the romaine style
27:59carving which is very renaissance influenced so we've got these husks and sort of typically this
28:04grotesque masks and scrolls so being a wood carver yourself obviously you can appreciate the skill that
28:10goes into creating something like this just reeks of quality you know it's it's nice and deeply carved
28:17and they could afford to waste if you like that amount of wood just to get these various elements
28:24standing proud yes because obviously it's beautifully chamfered on the back as well so you know a huge
28:28amount of skill has gone into making this and if we just looked at this as a late 19th century carved oak
28:33panel i would guess it was something like you know one to two hundred pounds how much extra can we put on
28:38that because of the association with you know with grocers hall and one of the largest guilds in the
28:43city of london you know it could be perhaps three or four hundred i won't be getting rid of this one
28:49anytime soon i've had it all this time and it's a joy to look at it so yes indeed yeah
28:58our venue today shuttleworth is renowned for its collection of vintage aircraft so it's little wonder
29:04that our experts have seen plenty of aviation items and this next one is particularly special
29:12in the early 1960s former raf officer and aviation innovator ken wallace designed and piloted a compact
29:20highly maneuverable gyrocopter little nelly became known for its unique role in aviation and cinematic
29:27history movie memorabilia expert stephen lane was thrilled to see it up close so when you think
29:34about james bond you think about the guns the gadgets and the vehicles and and what a vehicle
29:40this is you only live twice 1967 starring sean connery as james bond this custom gyrocopter that
29:50features so heavily in the film so i know that this is an auto gyro but what exactly is an auto gyro
29:56well an auto gyro is um essentially it fits sort of in between um an airplane and a helicopter
30:02you have fixed wings um and a helicopter you've got driven rotors with an auto gyro the actual rotor
30:09blades aren't driven in any form so essentially it's powered by this engine which pushes you forward
30:14through the air and then the lifts created by the rotor spinning in the air tell us more about it how
30:19how does it come to be in your possession well my father designed and partly built uh back 1962
30:26did a trial at pinewood and the next thing is they were rewriting the script and my father was filming
30:33in rio actually and for another film and went straight from there to japan all in all about 45
30:41hours of flying so for the seven and a half minutes of film 45 and a half hours flying just for seven
30:47and a half minutes yeah i believe that there were two crafts built for the film or used in the film is
30:51that correct yes one of them um sean connery sat in and it was known as the blue screen the blue screen
30:57yeah right so that that would be where he's getting into the cockpit yeah we're getting the close-ups of
31:01him and so it was your father then who flew the vehicle yes yeah you know all the footage of flying
31:09into the film he also filmed the view from little nelly of the volcano and of the helicopters you know the
31:19fight for all the film sequences well i think it's a beautiful vehicle it's a wonderful thing
31:24i know that we're not valuing it today because it's part of a collection a charitable collection
31:28i think it's an amazing thing that should be treasured should remain on display as much as
31:32possible as well for the general public to see together with little nelly today you've bought in
31:37some cases haven't you so we've got four cases dotted around us today this is what she supposedly
31:43arrived as in the film so what we're actually seeing here in these cases is the components
31:49so if i remember rightly bond calls for little nelly to come in with q they turn up and q has
31:55four of his technicians come into the room carrying these cases so it's these actual cases that come
32:00into into shot for that isn't it yeah i love one of the details on it actually you've got the universal
32:06exports label that just sits there within the cases and is attached to some of the other cases
32:10of course that was the cover business wasn't it the mi6 used to be able to move things around for
32:14bond as well yeah but i think if you were to bring the four cases together at auction i would certainly
32:20not hesitate to put an estimate of somewhere in the region of 50 to 100 000 pounds for them so
32:24really really valuable really exciting and very significant i've been really excited to see these
32:29here today and i just want to thank you for the effort that you must have gone to to bring these
32:33into the show today they're absolutely fantastic pleasure thank you thank you
32:54thank you so much for bringing this mug to the roadshow today i have to say i was so excited to see
33:00it because i'm american and this is american why did you decide to bring it today well my dad was a
33:07bricklayer and we lived in south oxfordshire we don't know for definite where he got it from but
33:14it either came from a house that he was knocking down and it was in there and they found it the other
33:21option is that they may have dug it up that's all i really know about it so what you have here is a
33:29sterling silver mug it is of a really nice design i particularly like that they've gone into so much
33:38detail with the coopering so they've even decided to pick out where the nails would have held the
33:45straps together and of course the really lovely detail here with the wood grain on the sides i think
33:52it's really lovely the marks on the bottom tell us that it is by tiffany and co hence american that it
34:01is sterling standard and they also give us some information about the year that it was made tiffany
34:07silver usually has ranges of dates unlike english silver so english silver you've got one date letter
34:13for one year this old english m was used after 1851 so i think the name tiffany and co the date the design
34:24the quality all are a testament to its value at auction today i would suggest an estimate of 700 pounds to
34:32a thousand pounds lovely thank you people of my generation will remember raymond briggs mostly
34:46because the snowman it was that amazing animated film with the really iconic music but actually he
34:51was an incredibly prolific illustrator and author there's a fantastic collection of his books here
34:57how did it come to be in your possession my father's best friend ended up marrying raymond briggs
35:03his cousin and we stayed in contact with doreen who was the cousin all through her life and when
35:11they passed this was bequeathed to me and my three sisters fantastic but how did doreen get the
35:17collection together i mean well doreen was a huge fan of raymond they were like almost like brother and
35:23sister as opposed to just cousins and she just followed his career all through his life every
35:30newspaper clipping every magazine clipping that she could get hold of she would collect which are
35:35with the collection as well and so she just sort of followed his career and he let her follow the
35:41career with him so it was a really really sweet thing they did together yeah it's a really extraordinary
35:48collection incredibly comprehensive of raymond briggs's works from the really well-known ones like the
35:52snowman and father christmas did some of his earliest works we start here in 1961 and we go
35:57right up to the 2000s they're basically all first editions they're not only signed by raymond briggs
36:03but there's often a long inscription to his cousin doreen and her husband this work ethel and ernest is
36:10raymond briggs's memoir of his parents basically which he produced later on in his life and tucked into it
36:16is an original wedding photograph of his parents and then there's his illustration which is based on this
36:22photograph so you really get a sense of roman briggs at work and and what his medium was and what his
36:29technique was for me the snowman is particularly evocative but do you have a favorite book in the collection
36:34my favorite is the snowman as well um it's just sums up christmas for me and family i mean it does
36:41have some value to it i think for a collection as a whole we'd be looking for something north of 2000
36:48pounds okay yes that's good
36:50our venue shuttleworth might be surrounded by sun-dappled countryside but just a few miles away
37:00there lurks a museum devoted to a more shadowy pursuit and i've been joined by justin steadman
37:06to find out more we love seeing gadgets on the antiques brochure and justin you are the curator at
37:11the nearby military intelligence museum you brought along some fascinating items and these are all
37:16connected with spycraft essentially which goes back to time immemorial it does yeah espionage spying if
37:24you want to call it that um and you've got subversion and sabotage as sort of uh like uh kin skills it
37:30really took off though when technology really came along and we're talking about the second world war
37:34then when there was an explosion of technology what about this one let's start with that this is actually
37:39a piece of exploding coal uh invented by the americans during their civil war in the 1860s
37:45this is a piece from uh from the second world war so you put this into a pile of coal which then gets
37:51fed into anything that burns coal and it will go off and blow the rivets at least so it's a sabotage
37:57tool so inside your piece of coal you have a little igniter with its fuse that's the igniter surrounded by
38:05explosive material and uh there you go what what's this thing here this is a limpet mine um it's designed
38:12to go underneath the water line of a ship and the force of the water would concentrate the blast
38:17and make a hole inside of the ship it was actually invented by a chap who lived in bedford um he tested
38:22it in bedford municipal swimming pool and uh using his the griddle off his wife's uh oven as a pretend
38:30side of a ship just to make sure that the magnets on the back would actually stick if it was moving
38:35through water but the the real problem was designing a fuse that would actually not go off the moment
38:40you set it going and for that they worked out that aniseed ball suites took a certain length of time to
38:47dissolve in water so that became part of the fuse and to test all these things they bought up all of
38:53the aniseed balls in all the sweet shops in bedford in order to carry out the testing aniseed balls who
38:58knew and then talking of things underwater what about these the miniature submarine was called the
39:04well man um it was developed actually in welling garden city just down the road from where we are
39:08here it's a single person submarine it's essentially just a a submersible canoe you'd sail that underneath
39:15the target ship plant your explosives underneath the waterline and hopefully be able to get away
39:20it's only about 20 foot long now something like this we have seen before so it looks like an ordinary
39:24suitcase until you open it out yes so this is a suitcase radio um used behind the enemy lines agents would
39:32take these overseas in order to pass information backwards and forwards because in espionage
39:37spying if you want to call it that sabotage subversion you need communications and you need to disguise
39:43what it is you're using to communicate with this weighs 34 pounds about 17 kilos yes as you carried it
39:50along extremely heavy wow and you need to make it look as if it was light obviously you would do
39:54absolutely and then this is the little morse code tapper here presumably is it that's the morse key there and
39:59your headphones there and all the other gubbins to to make it work with your various uh power units
40:05and uh antennas how fascinating i mean necessity is the mother of invention and when you see items like
40:11this at a time of national crisis like world war ii you see what the human mind what ingenuity can come
40:17up with yes absolutely fascinating justin thank you so much you're very welcome thank you
40:39so when i unpacked this today it absolutely filled me with delight and i can think of nothing nicer right
40:46now than having a cup of tea and a piece of cake served on this service absolutely what's your
40:50connection it actually um belongs to a friend of mine and it was given to his parents on their wedding
40:56day in 1933 well it just shouts out art deco from the 1930s doesn't it yes it does it's made by paragon
41:04who made fine bone china and the factory was based in longton in staffordshire so the pattern is
41:10icelandic poppy which came in various colorways that the lady of the house could have chosen according
41:15to her own preference we've wonderful yellow colorways here and the decoration is transfer printed
41:22with some enamel details added in by hand and there's just a wonderful fusion of stylistic influences
41:29going on here when you look at this tea service i mean if we lift up the sugar bowl here if you take
41:35the floral decoration out of the equation um this engine turned effect is very much like designs by
41:41keith murray who was working for wedgewood at a similar period so they're looking to other designers
41:47and other influences at the same time and of course the wonderful bright vibrant color palette brings
41:53immediately clarice cliff to mind also a very prominent staffordshire designer looking a wee bit closer
42:00again what's very special about this service is these flower molded handles similar
42:05handles we're seeing in ainsley tea services of the same time which also have had butterfly molded
42:10handles so it's just nice to see all of these design elements come together here so what do you
42:16think of this service yourself oh i think it's beautiful i can't imagine that i would particularly
42:22use it as a daily piece but it's certainly a showpiece and i would like to think that it's very tactile
42:28to drink from as well with the handle although i'd be terrified about dropping it i think
42:32a lot of people would so the market is not particularly strong for tea sets in general
42:39but this would be an exception and i think the market here in the uk would be good but what
42:44we're finding is services of this type are being bought by japanese buyers because the fine bone china
42:51and the delicate decoration really appeal strongly to that market so this is a small sample of a service
42:57for about eight people i believe yes so i think if this came to auction i can see it comfortably
43:03making in the region of one thousand pounds and possibly more wow well i think you'll be very happy
43:09with that well not many tea sets make that these days so absolutely so it's lovely to see it here
43:15today thank you for bringing it thank you katherine
43:24so this is a letter and the first thing that we can see is it's signed christabel bankhurst yep with
43:32this brilliant headed notepaper the women's social and political union votes for women wspu and we know
43:41they're the suffragettes aren't they so her mother was emeline pankhurst who was the founder of the wspu
43:50and they were deeds not words they were the militant suffragettes where did you get this from
43:58so when i was a teenager i knew a wonderful woman um called dolly and she used to teach table tennis and
44:05i used to go along to her classes she rang me up one day and said i've got a letter would you like to come
44:10and see i think you might be interested in it i didn't know what she was talking about she showed
44:14me the letter and of course i knew all about the suffragettes and she said would you like to buy it
44:20yes and uh i paid five pounds for it well suffragette items have become so valuable they are regularly
44:26faked right we know this isn't a fake and there are numerous things that we can look at so headed
44:33note paper the signatures rights and also there are these distinctive watermarks in the paper that
44:40when you hold them up to the light you can see that it's actually the women's social and political union
44:46motto and also i don't know whether you've noticed the wonderful votes for women watermark in there as
44:53well oh no i didn't and here in the letter in the middle of the letter it talks about the conciliation
45:00bill do you know what that was no so there were actually three bills 1910 1911 and 1912 and it was
45:10really to try and get the votes for women and unfortunately all three bills didn't go through
45:18and it ends here i hope that you're coming along to this demonstration do you know much about the
45:23demonstration yeah so i looked it up and it was called the coronation procession and it was a week
45:28later 40 000 women processed through london yeah it was the largest yeah suffrage procession yeah in
45:37britain at the time and it showed a real cross-section of factions of the suffrage movements they're not
45:45unique she was quite a prolific letter writer so they're not particularly unusual but the content is
45:51great even so you're five pounds 600 to 800 pounds wow gosh and it's only going to keep going up yeah
45:59yeah such huge interest
46:09we've brought my great-granddad's skis they're his
46:13old ones from when probably about 1930s i'm guessing so yeah they're quite old trying to find a little
46:20bit more about them we know they come from somewhere in geneva i mean how skis have changed over the years
46:26you know the bindings on this are just extraordinary aren't they you could see them in a cafe halfway up
46:32the um the ski slopes yeah exactly you know they're great bits of decoration value-wise 150 pounds thank
46:40you well done
46:45look these are lovely some 1930s are they family pieces they're my grandmother's um i i thought
46:51they were handmade i think you said this one might be this this one's how this one is handmade lovely hands
46:57hand stitching on it um some of the others you haven't aren't they are commercially made but they are
47:02silk you know there's no scene that's straight on this it's all completely scalloped and totally
47:07cut on the bias as well so they drape absolutely beautifully yeah but you know there is a market
47:12for these 30 40 pounds perhaps i wouldn't give them away for that they're so some of the other bits
47:17would be a little bit more but you just have to show me all of them so we can appreciate how lovely
47:21they actually are so there we are thank you very much
47:41so we couldn't be anywhere else but in ireland here don't you think yeah yeah no it's it's the atmosphere
47:48what part of ireland was it done do you suppose i think probably northern ireland but i don't know
47:53for certain well that's because this is a landscape by percy french who was an irish author songwriter
47:59and painter and your family knew persis yes yes he used to drop in uninvited and get fed and looked
48:06after and then he'd head back off to do his usual work in musicals and then of course these lovely
48:13watercolors which is just so effective this one about 1910 the technique he used was just wonderful
48:19i think very very wet paint and it is a very very wet day there's always a lot of rain around in the
48:24percy french but the light peeking through those dark lowerine clouds such an irish light to it they are
48:31really nice and also this um this broken effect that he gets which i think you can get when you
48:38use the watercolor very wet itself so it's all about being wet the paper is actually disturbed slightly
48:45by being so wet and it hasn't dried exactly flat it's slightly crinkled and then i suspect it's been
48:53scumbled a little he works the paper and it gives a texture and an effect
48:57in the paper and a little bit of body color which is the white here to make the the sky go ping and
49:03bring the water out in the brook and the effect is complete what do you think it's worth i've
49:09absolutely no idea anything from i know 100 pounds to a thousand pounds i don't know oh i think a bit
49:15more than a thousand i think uh up to two thousand for that one it's just enough okay thank you
49:27do you know i've been doing the program now for nearly 20 odd years and this is one of the things
49:36i've always wanted to see a piece of code stone so how's it come to you well it's been on the farm
49:44for about 45 years and it came from a demolition site somewhere in cambridge my husband used to do work
49:52for cambridge county council he took on the demolition contracts and because we've got a farm
50:00all the spoils came to the farm and this was one of the elena code in the 18th century she really
50:09developed this process for making a stone which it actually isn't stone it's a ceramic because all of
50:15the architects of that period were really trying to find a product that could emulate stone but was
50:23much cheaper more durable and you could get so much more detail and she basically cracked that process
50:29the recipes for how she produced this type of ceramic or stone whatever you want to call it were kept
50:36secret for years i would say that she was one of the biggest influence of 18th century architecture
50:43i mean it was even used on a buckingham palace before code stone you would be chiseling away for
50:51hours and it's really difficult to get that detail where this is poured into a mold and then sculpted
50:58you can end up getting this amazing detail you can't get that with stone plus it's impervious to
51:05the weather the elements it's just it's genius there's no other way of saying it down here you've got
51:10the date george iii 1791 code and then lambeth london you say it was your husband your father yes do
51:19did you work with your dad i did i i he used to take me to some of the demolition sites he worked on
51:26there was all manner of ephemera around some of it he would bring back to the farm and some of it he
51:32would burn and i think in those days didn't really see value in some of the things he obviously saw this
51:38and saw that it was of quality have you thought about values i haven't thought about values i've
51:46thought of it as being interesting rather than valuable because it does have a value i think at
51:52auction sort of seven to ten thousand pounds wow wow that's that's amazing to think i've just
52:01left it in the on the patio for years
52:13three years ago when kovid came i decided to look in much more detail at my father-in-law's medals
52:22and log books and try and establish what he actually did in the war
52:34a set of medals here that covers an awful lot of flying and the bit that i want to bring out about
52:41this particular group is that this man flew with a royal air force squadron numbered 161 squadron
52:48which flew out of raf tempsford not too far away from here and their job was to deliver
52:55members and supplies for the special operations executive soe so this is the clandestine bit of
53:03world war ii where we are parachuting in or landing agents who are going to go off in civilian clothing
53:11infiltrate occupied europe and the certain knowledge that if they get caught they're going to be executed
53:19and it was these aircraft that took them on those missions so on this occasion 8th of february 1944
53:27he's in a big aircraft two engines what happened on this particular occasion well 13 secret agents left
53:34thamesford thamesford or in the hudson destined for lyon uh down in the south of france they landed safely
53:43and they all left and joined the resistance coming back was different they started to load the
53:50passengers 13 passengers and there was a very important resistance worker whom the gestapo had
53:57caught that the resistance workers had freed and london wanted that resistance worker back
54:02so the plane went to leave uh the airfield and got stuck in the mud no but the people in the village
54:12nearby now there were 60 people got out of their beds at 2 30 in the morning and went to the field
54:19along with four oxen and they pulled the aircraft out and the aircraft got off safely and landed back at
54:27thamesford nine and a half hours late wow who was this man who did this it was my father-in-law what
54:34was his name john affleck how many operations did he do for the soe flights his focus mainly was on
54:41hudsons the hudsons did 44 sorties uh throughout the period that they were based at thamesford and
54:48he he would have flown 15 of those so the medals that we have here that he was awarded the distinguished
54:53service order distinguished flying cross air force medal don't see that one too often do you know
54:59what he did yes i do what he did was uh he was flying in a whitby bomber um he was on a nighttime
55:06flying training foot with full bomb load he went out and one of the engines failed now now the rule book
55:14said if an engine fails then you you bail out basically so he bailed the crew out turned the aircraft
55:20down towards the sea got out of his seat himself and as he did so he saw and saw a navigator sitting
55:27there and the navigator said to him i'm sorry sir i've pulled my ripcord on my parachute it won't work
55:35so i can't imagine what he said to that person but he got back into the cockpit and he landed that
55:41aircraft safely back at the airfield but he was court-martialed for that because he had broken
55:49the rules of the raf but saved a life absolutely amazing a wartime career 39 45 star aircrew europe
55:58france and germany clasp defense war quadriga avec palme and the dutch flying cross as well
56:07there is a very keen market to collect medals for soe pilots and aircrew
56:16i think there there are collectors out there that would would pay somewhere in the region of 50 000
56:24pounds for this and i think it's worth every penny and i think that is a fantastic story and if only
56:33we could say thank you to all those french people who came out and pulled it out the mud that day
56:37that would be so cool thank you
56:55do you remember we saw this gyrocopter earlier in the program affectionately known as little nelly
57:01did you wonder why it was called little nelly because i did it turns out that the designer ken
57:05wallace flew in a lancaster bomber in the second world war and in the second world war if you had
57:09the surname wallace you were usually nicknamed nelly after the actress and singer nelly wallace hence
57:17little nelly so now you know from the antiques roadshow here at shuttleworth bye-bye
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