Staggering Value Of 'Marvellous' 325-Year-Old Longcase Clock | BBC Antiques Roadshow UK

Given to us about 10 years ago by a man who tried to teach me Latin and history at school and who subsequently visited us often in Greece and Italy where we lived some years. And when he became too old to live at home he went into a nursing home and he decided to give various pieces of furniture to friends and to a number of his ex-pupils. What a lovely present, absolutely gorgeous present. What date do you think it is? I think it's about 1700 but I'm not sure. I think you're absolutely spot on. It's a lovely example of a walnut marquetry longcase clock and this convex moulding just underneath the hood here is really a sign of either prior to 1700 or just around 1700. Are you a bit of a botanist or not? No, I'm afraid not. So you can't identify some of these beautiful flowers. And again down here and also on the plinths. I think that is a lovely example. That is where it starts to go just a little bit wrong because the initial thing here is you should have had some lovely barley twist ebonised columns on each side of the hood. They've obviously come off. They can be replaced. So the clock is signed by William Threlcold of London and although I haven't got my tape measure with me that is an 11-inch dial. Most of them were 12 and a little bit earlier they would have been 10-inch. The 10-inch obviously being the most desirable because they're the smallest clocks and other things to look for for an early clock are nice early spandrels and you've got tulip engraving here between the spandrels on north, south, east and west of the dial. Put a lovely rosette in the centre and you've got ringed winding holes. Let's just, not actually quite that heavy, but have a little look at the movement and we've got five ringed pillars which is what I'd expect and some, well not the best re-bushing in the world in all honesty. That's had a hard life that movement. They've also used some fairly modern screws to put the spandrels on. When was this last restored or cleaned? About eight years ago. Right, so the clockmaker might have done all that at that time. Yes, I think he might have, yes. Right, right. Well, he's also sadly left you with a rather squat, very, very heavy seconds hand. That should have been a lovely slender one and that hand is not original either. Just opening the inside of the case to look at various things and again you can see very clearly how the lovely original hinges would have come right round here and you can see the two holes which would have hurled them. The main thing is it was a lovely present. Marvellous. So he gave it to you roughly how long ago? About 10 years ago. Just before you had it restored? Yes, yes. And did you have any sort of indication of what it might be worth when he gave it to you? Well, we had it valued subsequent to his death and they thought it was worth something between £5,000 and £6,000. Right, well that was probably a reasonably good quote those years ago. These things have shot up through the roof because they're very desirable and there aren't actually that many left in nice condition. Retail, you'd be looking for a nice 11-inch marquetry, somewhere between, oh, sort of £18,000 and £24,000. Really? It's a jolly nice clock. And he wasn't a very wealthy man. He had no idea, I think, of the value of what he was giving us.