Handyman who inherited 18th century house finds padlock hoard worth thousands

SWNS

A retired handyman was stunned to discover a hidden trove of antique padlocks worth thousands after inheriting an 18th-century house.  Michael Hamson, 79, of Coven, Staffs., found over 200 historic locks—some from Argentina and India—while clearing the Brewood home of late friend Mary Eileen Jones, 93.  The locks, dating back to the 1800s, were made by her ancestor’s company, E. Jones & Sons. Auctioneer Will Farmer called it “an incredible find.”  A rare 1902 exhibition padlock with 50,000 combinations alone could fetch £800.  The entire haul is expected to sell for up to £6,000 on May 16.

Transcript

00:00We're Mike and Sheila Hampson and we had an old house left to us through an old lady who

00:09used to help out and after she died she left us everything. No idea of anything that was locked

00:15away in the garage and all this brass stuff was locked under the staircase. There's 200 locks

00:21stashed away all into and some damn good nice ones. A lot of their locks were sent all over the

00:30world with the railways that were being built by the British and Argentina. There's one from the

00:38Peninsula Railways in India of all places. It's really really interesting and to look through all

00:44the books and the order books. There's even an order from Halfords 1905. And we thought it was

00:53time to sell because we've sort of sold the house now and this collection is still valuable to Michael

01:00because he doesn't want to sell it but I think it's the right thing to do yeah. Because of the age now

01:05clocking on 80 odd and I don't really want them to just be left and slung at the end of my death

01:13because there seemed to too much history for William All and it's past. There ain't much left.

01:20And I looked up I looked up Enoch Jones on the internet and it says locksmith from William All.

01:28Very very little known about this company but I'm not surprised it was all at our house. The lot,

01:35all their ledges, everything. They set up the factory in 1974. Yeah, 1974. The first Enoch Jones.

01:45And he passed on and left it to his son who was John Enoch Jones. Then he died and left it to

01:52his daughter who never got married, Eileen. Then she went on to be 93, 92 and passed away then. And then

02:14because we'd helped her for 40 odd years, she just took care of us really. She actually left it to us,

02:22yeah. Yeah. I don't know how you'd describe it. Amazing, yeah. We're not, certainly not gold hunters,

02:28we're just normal people. Not, not going, you know, trying to get things off elderly people. We're just

02:36normal, normal, normal, normal, normal, normal.

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