Edwina Currie ‘s 17th century cottage in the Derbyshire Peak District is full of “little treasures” that she’s bought at auctions over the years.
But the eclectic mix of items aren’t the most precious, or indeed, the most interesting, things that live in her home. For two-and-a-half years that position has been filled by a Ukrainian refugee family that Currie is looking after until the war in their home country ends.
The mum and two boys, aged 11 and 15, are “just amazing,” says the former Conservative MP, who reinvented herself as a novelist and reality TV star after losing her South Derbyshire seat in the 1997 general election.
The Ukrainian refugees in my home, and in many others in the UK. https://t.co/KGHX2HZle8
— Edwina Currie (@Edwina_Currie) October 28, 2024
And now she’s using some of her home’s little treasures to help other Ukrainians in need, by selling a few of her quirky items on the Celebrity Yorkshire Auction House TV show, with the help of the affable auctioneer Angus Ashworth.
The money the sale raises is going to Midlands Humanitarian Aid for Ukraine, which sends fire and rescue, and medical donations to Ukraine in ambulances driven by volunteers.
“They’re all paramedics or people from the fire service, and they help treat civilians while they’re out there, all in their own time as volunteers,” Currie explains.
“It was an easy choice – the continuing need in Ukraine is very acute, and the more we can do to help both the war effort and the efforts of ordinary people to live their lives with as much safety as possible, then the more likely it will come to a positive outcome eventually.
“Plus, I’d very much like the family I have here to be able to return home safely at some point, and I think they would like that too.”
But although Currie, 78, wants the family to be able to go home when possible, there’s no doubt she’ll miss them. “They’ve been a real education for me,” she admits. “It’s the first time in my life I’ve ever had boys in the house – I’ve got to know ju-jitsu, and this weekend, it was Total Ninja, and on previous occasions, it’s been go-karting.”
The former junior health minister, infamous for the 1988 salmonella in eggs furore, admits some of the rooms in her home are “bursting at the seams” with things she’s bought at auctions, which she used to enjoy going to with her second husband John Jones, who died in 2020.
But she says that when she decided to sell some of the items she’d collected over the years at the Celebrity Yorkshire Auction House, she tried to choose a few and admits “Everything was ‘I really don’t want this to go’.”
She eventually chose an old miner’s lamp she’d been given by miners in her constituency (she had two of them and kept an engraved one), which was sold at the auction for £55, a signed limited edition Beryl Cook print (£210), an 1848 Charles Dickens first edition of Dombey and Son (£360), a 19th century copper and walnut carriage warmer (£130), a 1930s carved wooden Donald Duck (£45), a carved Mary Magdalene figure (£60), a set of hat pins (£22), and a wooden beaker marked with ‘Scutari Hospital, 1855’, which is where and when Florence Nightingale worked during the Crimean War (£360).
Currie says: “The beaker is really very special. Florence Nightingale was a Derbyshire woman, and of course, I was a Derbyshire MP, and I live in Derbyshire, so I’ve collected stuff about her and by her.
“My theory is it was carved by somebody who’d been injured, by a British soldier. He would have known Miss Nightingale and seen her doing her rounds with the lamp, and he may have given it to her, and she’s brought it home and has given it to somebody she knew, and that’s how it ended up at an auction in Bakewell where I bought it.
“I’m very reluctant to see that go – if it comes up at auction again, I’m going to buy it back.”
But one unique curiosity that definitely didn’t go up for auction was the Spitting Image puppet head of Currie, which Ashworth saw in her house and said: “She’s not to go to auction, is she?”
“She is not going to auction, no – she will probably preside at my funeral,” replied Currie.
Giving his approval, Ashworth concluded: “I don’t think this should be on anyone’s shelf but yours, Edwina.”
Currie travelled to Ashworth’s auction house, Ryedale Auctioneers, in Kirkbymoorside, North Yorkshire for the sale, which she says was an “absolutely wonderful” day.
And while she was in Yorkshire, she took the opportunity to visit the racehorse she owns with a syndicate of friends. The two-year-old filly, Percy’s Daydream, was sired by a Derby winner, and Currie says: “Oh my God, she’s gorgeous.
“It was a lovely contrast, because I spent part of one day among old, dusty stuff in Angus’s auction house, seeing it move on to a better life and a better home somewhere else, and then I spent the next day out in the countryside, in the green hills of North Yorkshire, watching this wonderful bunch of young horses being schooled. It was just magic.”
And then it was back home to Derbyshire, with £1,357 raised from the sale to give to charity. Currie says she’s now “concentrating on looking after my Ukrainians” – although she doesn’t rule out dabbling in a few more auctions.
“I have to ration myself, I really have to be very strict with myself,” she admits. “If there’s a big gas bill coming, I won’t even let myself look at auctions online. But if the gas bill is paid, and there’s a little bit of spare money around…”
She adds: “I have the pleasure of owning some lovely things, some little treasures. And to have that is great, to look through the old books. When I hold in my hand something that was created back then – in 1848 like the Dombey and Sons book, in 1855, like the Scutari cup – I feel a real thrill about it.
“I think it’s going to be a real headache when I pass away, my inheritors are going to have a headache deciding how to deal with all this stuff. But for the moment, it brings me joy and pleasure.”
Celebrity Yorkshire Auction House returns to Really for a fourth series at 9pm on November 11.
