An Antiques Roadshow guest was left stunned after discovering an antique she dug up from her garden was worth thousands.
Expert Adam Schoon was delighted after a women brought in a medieval stone head, which she had dug up by mistake, during Sunday's instalment. After seeing the unique antique, Adam said: “It’s one of the most enigmatic stone carvings I’ve ever come across on the Antiques Roadshow. Where did you get this mysterious figure from?”
The woman replied: “I dug him up in my back garden. I was digging drains and just happened to dig down and hit stone, pulled him out and there he was.” Adam replied “good grief”, before the guest said at first she thought it was an old garden ornament, writes the Mirror.
“But then the more I cleaned him, I thought no, I’m not sure,” she continued. Giving his expert opinion on the find, Adam described the object as having a “very primitive nose”.
“And those eyes, I mean those eyes are spectacular aren’t they?" he continued. "Very reminiscent of a Celtic style. And I think to myself, that here we are in Northern Ireland where the Celts existed. Stone heads like this go back literally over two thousand years and the style of this one I think is second, third century AD.”
Adam explained how similar stone heads with faces on have been found near Hadrian’s Wall on the North of England border with Scotland. “But the difficulty of dating this one is that we haven’t found it in an archaeological context. It was in your drain,” he said.
“We have no written evidence as to what they were for or how they were used, but they are often found near water, beneath the surface. Some people think they were used to communicate with the spirits.”
Adam continued: “He [the stone head] has come to us in silence and can’t tell us anything – but that expression is fantastic.”
He went on to tell the guest the stone could be worth between £3,000 and £5,000, leaving her stunned. When asked what she thought, the guest replied: “That’s brilliant.”
Just a few days ago, another guest was left speechless when it was revealed their family heirloom was worth a staggering six-figure sum.
The Faberge sculpture of a pear blossom belonged to the Worcestershire army regiment and was given as a gift to soldiers who fought in the Boer War in 1903. Expert Geoffrey Minn estimated it would fetch £1 million today – in what is thought to be a record-breaking sum for the BBC show.
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