Antiques Roadshow guests laugh as Churchill treasures found ‘at the dump’ worth thousands
An Antiques Roadshow expert was astounded when he was told that a box of Churchill Winston's personal items had been salvaged from a dump.
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WARNING: This article contains spoilers from Antiques Roadshow.
Antiques Roadshow guests couldn’t stop themselves from bursting out laughing upon finding out the value of a box of Winston Churchill’s items.
The iconic BBC daytime series went to Eltham Palace to film another episode with expert Mark Smith meeting a guest and his partner who had stumbled across a box filled with historic surprises.
“You turned up today with a really big box and this is only a fraction of what was in that box”, Smith began.
“And I said to you: ‘Where did you get this from?’, what did you say?”
To this, the guest replied with a smile: “From the dump.”
When Smith asked what he was doing at the dump, the guest explained that he had worked there for the past 15 years and was allowed to take whatever he liked from the rubbish.
He admitted that he actually had “three sheds full” of items that he had picked up from the dump, with the guest laughing that it wasn’t her “problem” since they don’t live together yet.
The owner continued: “I’ve got loads of letters, over 200 letters with this same load and it was from a mother to her son.
“The mother used to work for Winston Churchill, she was a cook and the husband was a butler for Winston Churchill as well.
“And she used to write to her son every day about the daily goings of Winston Churchill, what he was getting up to, how he was feeling and just interesting stuff about him.”
Smith pointed out a signed photograph of Churchill which had been given to his cook.
He continued: “So we have the famous cigar. Winston was known for those, obviously.
“Cigar case, signed photo and the piece de resistance, I have to say, Winston’s hat.”
Smith elaborated: “You’ve caused a problem, because if you come to me with all of this stuff and said: ‘I’ve been buying this over the years and I buy it from auctions and all that sort of stuff’, I would have sat there and thought to myself ‘very likely, it’s not real.’
“It’s been brought together and given a provenance. But I’ve seen all those letters from the lady to her son, daily letters, saying ‘this is what Winston is doing today’ and this is during war time as well.
“So she’s sending home all sorts of information, which corroborates all of the things that you’ve got and it’s not just these bits here.
“You’ve got lots of other things that Winston touched, Winston signed and Winston poked.
“So we had a think about this. I think that your box - remind me where you got it from again?”
“The dump”, the guest sniggered as Smith stated: “The dump. We think that your box is worth £10,000.”
There were gasps from the surrounding crowds as the guest and his partner laughed.
He said: “Oh my God. £10k. That’s crazy.”
“So do you think moving in now with the three sheds is the best bet?”, Smith joked as the woman cheekily teased: “Yeah, maybe a holiday first.”
Smith continued: “You’ve found it on the dump, it’s fantastic. Truly. Everyone I’ve told about this, we all just walked around today and gone ‘Oh wow.’
“The other thing they’ve said is where’s the dump because we all want to come down there.”
But the guest wasn’t having any of it as he refused to answer the question: “Dozens of people have asked me, I haven’t told anyone.”
Antiques Roadshow is available to watch on BBC One and BBC iPlayer.
