The re-imagined story …
I still associate the Antiques Roadshow theme tune with childhood bath nights. My brother always says for him it signalled the end of the weekend and school on Monday morning; he hated school.
Our mum was a big fan of the programme but who would have thought we might have anything valuable in our council house home.
“My aunt Ethel gave this to me in case I ever had an emergency,” mum told me as she slipped the Artdeco brooch into my hand. “She found it in the lining of an evening bag she bought from the pawnbrokers in Wellington Street just before the war. She told me the stones were blue diamonds and that it was really valuable. She said old Mr Adams couldn’t have possibly known it was there, so what he didn’t know, he couldn’t grieve over. She kept it as insurance for the time she would eventually leave uncle Fred.” As it turned out she never had to leave uncle Fred as he died first.
Well if there was ever an emergency we were in the middle of one now.
After nearly thirty years of marriage mum had walked out on dad. My brother and I didn’t understand exactly why; neither of them would discuss it. Dad was still living in the council house where we had grown up, but mum had moved out. First she stayed with a friend, then she spent a few nights in a bed and breakfast. I was dreading I was probably the next stop, but now she had a plan.
She was moving to the Shetland islands. No, she’d never been there but she loved the detective programme and hero Jimmy Perez and she said it felt right – she didn’t feel the cold and she never minded the rain! My brother thought she was having a breakdown.
When the Antiques Roadshow announced they were coming to Swindon, mum asked me to take the brooch along and get it valued; she couldn’t afford to take any time off work. With hindsight it would have been easier to take it to a local jewellers, but none of us were thinking that clearly at the time.
So after a sleepless night with a teething baby, I dragged myself and the said child along to the Steam Museum where the Roadshow had set up camp. If I had had any idea how long I would have to queue up I probably would have refused to go. The novelty of seeing Fiona Bruce and the familiar faces of the experts soon paled as the baby set off wailing again just as I made it out of the holding bay and into the inner sanctum where the experts sat at their tables.
The brooch turned out to be a piece of paste jewellery; hand cut glass on a coloured foil base. A very pretty piece, but basically worthless.
Mum went back to dad shortly after that and no one ever spoke about the whole episode again.
The facts …
This elaborate headstone marks the last resting place of George Adams and is also a memorial to his wife Lucina. Lucina Adams died in 1877 and was buried in the churchyard at St Mark’s. By the time George died six years later the churchyard at St Mark’s was closed and he was buried in Radnor Street Cemetery.
George and Lucina moved to Swindon in the 1840s and George worked as a fitter in the GWR Works. George continued to work in the railway factory into the 1870s when he was then in his fifties, but sometime before 1881 he obviously had a change of occupation.
In the census of that year widowed George was living at 12 Wellington Street where he describes himself as a Master Pawnbroker.
When he died in 1883 he left an estate valued at £4,429 13s 3d to his two sons Frederick Washington Adams of 10 Gloucester Terrace and Charles Ambrose Adams of 12 Wellington Street.
Charles continued to live in his father’s house and described himself as a pawnbroker/jeweller. By 1901 he had moved upmarket to Melrose House on The Sands, just up the road from his brother Frederick. Charles died in 1957 aged 98.
Radnor Street Cemetery 