³ÉÈËÂÛ̳

Jay Blades and the team bring three treasured family heirlooms, and the memories they hold, back to life.

The first visitor to the barn is Sue Kent from Manchester, with an heirloom – and a guilty secret. She is hoping silversmith Brenton West can help restore a prized tea set given to her by her uncle and godfather John. Sadly, a collapsed kitchen shelf has knocked a fair few dents into the family silver, and as a result it has been hidden away in a cupboard for nearly 10 years. This has left poor Sue wracked with guilt about the accidental damage. She is desperate to see it restored and gleaming once more.

Next to arrive is Sarah Lindsay from Scotland, who is hoping Dominic Chinea’s expertise in metals can salvage an unusual family relic: an old cast-iron post box. Sarah’s family have long links to the post office, as her great-grandfather, grandfather and father were all proud postmen. The family call the post box ‘Papa’s post-box’ after her grandfather Angus, known as Gus. He was in the Royal Mail for over 40 years, and the post box was a retirement gift. It has been standing steadfast in the family garden since the 1980s, but over 40 years of exposure to Scottish weather has taken its toll, and the key to access the letters was lost long ago.

Philip Birkenstein from Buckinghamshire has brought in a precious keepsake that symbolises his family’s wartime experience of the 1930s and 40s – and it needs Suzie Fletcher’s leatherwork expertise. Phillip’s parents grew up in Germany and experienced the worst of the Nazi regime before managing to escape to England, where they met and married. When they fled, they left all their possessions behind, arriving in the UK with very little. Phillip’s item is a leather folder; intricately detailed, it is a precious and important piece of his heritage, as it is one of the only items his parents were able to salvage from their family home in Germany. Suzie has a tricky challenge on her hands, as reviving the perished leather folder is slow progress and fiddly work. However, she is determined to do justice to this important piece of Phillip’s family history.