What's the oldest thing in your house?

A coffee set bought about 40 years ago from a seniors home for £3. The owner, an 84 year old told me she was given it as a present on her 25th birthday... it's hallmarked too so maybe a trip to The Antiques Road Show is in order

We have 3 vegetable tureen type things that DH'S father remembered using at his grandmother's farm. FIL would have been 110 years old this year so I guess they are quite old. We also have a Georgian kneehole desk which was left behind in a house we bought.

When we got married on 1970 we could not afford new furniture, Habitat was very in fashion. So my FIL helped us go round some antique shops and we furnished our house. I still use most every day, but think the oldest is an oak plank blanket chest, which has clay pipe burns in the top, from around 1700. Have never regretted having old furniture it has stood up to family life really well.

That's terrible, Hilda.

I have a pair of nutcrackers made by my whitesmith great grandfather at the end of his apprenticeship. Unfortunately they don't work and I'm not sure of the date.

I have a small tea bowl from the Nanking cargo. It left China in 1750, and was auctioned in Amsterdam in 1985. I used to have a very fine ammonite, found at Forest Head shale quarry when I was a schoolgirl. I lent it to an exhibition and they never returned it!

Blimey - so much old stuff. We should have a Gransnet Road Show. Where are you Fiona?

I too have an ammonite I picked up off the beach just along the coast from Lyme Regis and I also have a calcite geode that must be pretty old.

From slightly more recent times I have a tea set that belonged to my husband's grandmother and was inherited I believe from her grandmother, so I'd guess it's about 120-150 years old or thereabouts.

Iv'e got an trilobite fossil I found. Beats ammonites

My father's WW1 medals - he married late in life so was the same age as most people's grandfather.

DH!

My father collected crowns(5 shillings not things on heads) and I think i have them back to Charles I. Must have a look again.

Apart from a few (bought!) fossils I have a lovely little ring type fastener made from bronze, I think, with an integral pin across the centre and a design of oak leaves. I was told it probably came from the 1500s, and had been found in a field in Oxfordshire. I could imagine it being used as a fastening on a young girl's garment. When I showed it to my sister and mentioned it could have been made around the time of the Great Plague, she muttered 'better wash my hands before lunch then!' But she had been a primary school teacher...

A George IV bushel hod - we keep logs in it.

A piece of bog yew, approx 3000 years old (or more)Makes a good door stop!

I'd like to see that elegran. I have an ammonite too but we found it at Lyme Regis. Apart from that, and DH, the oldest thing in our house is a Victorian silver cream jug - not an heirloom; just something we picked up on our travels because I thought it was pretty.

I have an old gate legged table, parts of which apparently date back to the late 1600s. It's had its top and a leg replaced, but still has the original small drawer at one end.

Oooh vampirequeen. I have an ammonite from Whitby too, found not bought, buying fossils doesn't count. (I've another strange fossil that I couldn't identify. When I find it I'll take a pic and post it and maybe you will recognise it. Looks like a bit of plant stem, about an inch long and hexagonal.)

Me

A Victorian jug that I bought from a sale. I think it's beautiful, my family think I'm nuts!

Refectory table circa 1660, my father and grandparents were antique dealers. Old junk? We have.

A Georgian bow-fronted mahogany chest of drawers. It came from a rectory where 7 generations of my ancestors were hereditary rectors. It's a great repository for all my clutter - apologies to my reverend forebears!

Cups and saucers belonging to my paternal two grandmothers are pretty ancient.

Me, apart from that our Ercol dining table & chairs which were a wedding present.

In the house itself, probably the Neuchâtel clock dating 1775.

Probably the house itself, at least the base walls and foundations, dating 1587. The roof burnt in 1663.

No scratch the clock. We go fossil hunting at Whitby and have a small collection of ammonites dating back millions of years.