The latest episode of Antiques Roadshow has shared the incredible story of items with centuries-old links to the Royal Family (Picture: BBC)
Family heirlooms with an incredible link to the Royal Family has been revealed to be worth up to £150,000 on Antiques Roadshow.
This week’s episode of the long-running series saw the experts return to Pollock Park in Glasgow after another episode that was filmed there aired last year.
This time around the items on show ranged from a Dorothy Steel painting, a Victorian-era water purifier and a collection of Alexander McQueen garments.
But it was a silver ure and basin and a two-century old bottle of rosewater that provided the most jaw-dropping tale and valuation.
Explaining the story behind the items, the man who owns them explained they went back to an ancestor of his, Jock, who helped save King James V’s life.
‘In the 14th century on the outskirts on Edinburgh in a place called Cramond, one day he heard a commotion on a bridge and saw a man on horseback being attack so he ran to the bridge and helped fend off the attackers and then took the man into his house and bathed his wounds,’ he began when re-telling the incredible story.
Expert Gordon Foster valued them at over £100,000 (Picture: BBC)
‘Long story short, it turned out he had saved the life of King James V, and as a simple farmer he was then gifted land by the King.
‘But a condition of that was that he and his ancestors must be available to the King and his ancestors if ever called on again at Cramond.’
Fast forward to 1822 and when George IV visited Scotland on his royal tour, descendants of the family attended to the King with a basin of water, as James V had requested three hundred years previously.
A ceremonial washing of the hands was then carried out to represent the washing of the wounds.
In the glass jar presented on the show was the original water used for the ceremony, as well as the two vessels.
As expert Gordon Foster explained, the ure came from a maker in the early 19th century that was considered ‘the Rolls Royce of silverware’.
He was left ‘gobsmacked’ hearing the story behind them (Picture: BBC)
‘Anything by Paul Storr that turns up on the market are hugely sought after,’ he said.
While the maker was by the same firm, its maker was Phillip Rundell.
After explaining how the original ceremony played out, the owner then shared how the items had been used for subsequent monarchs, including for the late Queen Elizabeth II.
Gordon then said that without the story, the silverware itself was already worth ‘a substantial amount of money’.
‘We’re looking at £30-50,000,’ he said.
He continued: ‘I would regard these as one of Scotland’s treasures. These are extremely important pieces of silver. You have the royal connection and the continuing royal tradition that is going to keep going down the generations, which takes this into a whole different level of value.’
Coming to his conclusion, he shared: ‘I don’t want to frighten you too much, but I would put a valuation of this on £100-£150,000.’
The family and the crowd then gasped, clearly in shock at what they’d just been told.
He added: ‘It could even be slightly more.’
However, as the owner shared: ‘For us the value is priceless because it is the only way we can do the service, is to continue using the silverware that has always been used for it.
‘Thank you for telling us, but it is not going anywhere.’
As the segment wrapped up Gordon added: ‘Thank you for sharing this with us…I am still gobsmacked, but I have loved seeing it.’
Antiques Roadshow airs Sundays at 7pm on BBC One.
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‘I am gobsmacked.’
