A routine probate valuation takes Journal antiques columnist and Brown & Co auctioneer Craig Bewick into an amazing house where Georgian and Victorian silver was used on the breakfast table – and china that most people would exhibit in a display cabinet was to be found in the pot cupboard . . . !

A book decanter set, part of the amazing collection discovered during a routine probate valuation by Brown & Co

I have to admit that I was a bit taken aback when I walked into the house. The place was absolutely full of antiques; I mean absolutely stuffed with interesting things. As I glanced around, everything I looked at seemed to be Georgian or Victorian. Modern in this home was Edwardian!

What made the surprise so great was the fact that there had been absolutely no warning that the visit would be anything special. The email from my colleague who had taken the request was laconic: “We’ve been asked to do a probate valuation, a couple of items, can you take a look?”

I arrived on the doorstep of the house with a pen, a sheet of paper and 30 available minutes before I had to move on to my next scheduled appointment.

 The lady who opened the door looked at my sheet of paper doubtfully and remarked: “You might need more than that.”

She was right. It would eventually take two full days to assess the contents of the property. The little camera that I use as an aide-memoire was running out of disk space by the end!

One of the really wonderful things about the house was that this was not merely the hoard of some obsessive collector. The people who lived here used their antique objects on a daily basis.

So the hallmarked silver toast rack was actually used for the breakfast toast. The silver envelope opener was used to open letters. A fine Masons dinner service was in a  kitchen cupboard, rather than a china cabinet.

Incidentally, the china that was on display in this place was the best Royal Worcester dinner service I have ever seen: Late 19th century, the pieces hand-painted with game birds. A real beauty.The furniture was up in the same league. Whereas a typical probate valuation at a good house might yield half-a-dozen really interesting items, this property had 30 or 40, fine-quality pieces dating back to the Georgian period, beautifully cared for, indeed in showroom condition.

There were also some cracking pictures on the walls. The most striking was a highland scene by Robert Watson (1865-1917) depicting sheep and lambs on a Scottish hillside, with a storm gathering, a burn rushing along at the bottom of the picture.

Watson was a talented painter who concentrated on this type of subject in an age when the country was in the midst of a tartan love affair.  Queen Victoria spent much time at Balmoral Castle and the Highlands were still a wild, romantic, inaccessible, place.

Superbly painted, with wonderful detail, Watson’s larger canvasses today sell for prices in the £2,000- £5,000 range, which is what this will make.

Another wall displayed a lovely still-life by Thomas Whittle (1829-73). The quality of his work can be judged from the fact that he had 20 of his works exhibited at the Royal Academy and 51 Royal Society of British Artists exhibitions.

The Robert Watson Highland scene painting, above, expected to make from £2,000- £5,000, and (top) the four-piece, collectable Meissen monkey band

So, a lot of stuff, built up over several generations, by people with a good eye, willing to spend what it took to acquire the things they wanted to have in their home, and, with the exception of one or two pieces that the family wanted to retain, it has all been transported to Brigg.

It will make the next Antiques and Fine Art Auction at Brigg (Saturday, 12th September) one of the best sales to have taken place in the rooms for several years. As regular column readers will be aware, that is also the first of the Brigg auctions to be live on the Internet.

Picking out the star lots of this collection is difficult; there are simply so many and at the time of writing we are still doing our research, but there is a particularly nice Manchester grandfather clock dating from the late 18th or early 19th century.

The pictures will do well, with quite a few of them making into four figures, and the furniture will attract a lot of attention, not least, I suspect, from the London trade. Fine Georgian furniture, in wonderful condition, which has not been seen on the market for half-a-century or more, is just irresistible.

The collectables range from a four-piece Meissen monkey band and a couple of 18th century Staffordshire lambs to Georgian silver and jewellery.

Ten or 20 years ago such a house visit would not have been so uncommon. Today these discoveries are much rarer events, occurring perhaps once or twice a year. It was an absolute delight.

;I can think of only one house visit that provided a greater surprise: Very early in my career I was sent to do a valuation at a place where nothing much had been changed for a century or more. It did not even have electricity or running water. Can you imagine? The good news was that neither had the furniture and furnishings. They made an absolute fortune.