Antiques Roadshow: Chess set valued

An Antiques Roadshow guest at Wollaton Hall explained they wouldn’t be selling their “ingenious” chess set, which some may have described as “scruffy” due to the sentimental value it had.

Ronnie Archer-Morgan explained a collector could pay a small fortune for the special set but the guest insisted it would stay in the family.

Ronnie began: “I love this mechanical looking chess set. What made you bring this in?”

The guest replied: “Well my father was a flight engineer flying Sunderland flight boats from Pembrokeshire dock and in his downtime he modelled this chess set out of nuts and bolts and spare parts from dare I say the engineer’s store and he played with it in the war time and we’ve played with it as children and my son now plays with it.

“So it’s survived the test of time and we’ve still got all the pieces.”

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Intrigued, Ronnie probed: “So tell me about the nuts and bolts of the story behind this.”

“My grandfather was very much the make do and mend,” the guest explained. “He’d never buy something if he could make it.

“I think this kept them entertained. Chess can take a long time but also making it would have taken up some of his downtime as well.”

Ronnie remarked: “I just love the ingenuity of it. It’s made from wing nuts here. You know then this looks like a spark plug or something and he’s just sawn the turrets of the castle in there.

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“I don’t know where he’s got these balls to put on the end there but he’s obviously sawed these balls and he’s cut this ball to make the Bishop like that.

“It really is clever. I love the carrying box it is in with its handle here and its legs if you want to make it into a little low table.

“Obviously these are stored inside. What are the medals here?”

“This is the Atlantic star medal which he was given for flying the missions against the U-boats,” the guest replied.

“He didn’t like to talk about it too much so I can’t really tell you too much about that.”

“They made our shores safe from U-boats and the U-boats used to hunt in packs,” Ronnie chipped in.

“So these flying boats, they could long distance, they could land on the sea and wait.

“These guys were so brave. I just think it’s so clever. To some people it might look scruffy, I don’t know what you guys think?”

As Ronnie turned to the crowd, they asserted they “loved” the ingenious chess set.

Going on to value the piece, Ronnie shared: “With the story, with that connection with the flying boats, I think someone would give £500 for that if it ever came up for auction, which it won’t.”

The guest agreed: “No, we’ll keep it for sure. Thank you ever so much.”

Antiques Roadshow airs Sunday on BBC One at 8pm.

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