'Junk' dates back to Crusades

LONDON - A pile of junk cleared from a country home finds its way to a garage sale in a nearby market town. Among the detritus is a piece of wood measuring 25cm by 10cm, covered with painted figures.

Antiques dealer Martin Roberts suspected the item being sold by a friend was worth a punt, so he offered to swap it for a pine chest of drawers and six Victorian glass handles which he had bought for £13 ($33). He agreed to hand back 10 per cent of the final sale price achieved.

The gamble now looks like it may pay off handsomely after the piece was identified as a possible tabernacle door belonging to the Knights Templar and dating back to the Middle Ages.

Roberts hopes his latest find could match his best discovery: a 3500-year-old Egyptian artefact he found in a boxful of silverware at a house clearance near Harrogate.

Having paid £50 for that lot, he sold the 10cm royal shabti torso of Amenophis III, thought to be the grandfather of King Tutankhamun, for £30,000 at auction to a British private bidder, who paid 12 times the reserve price.

Roberts, a former professional golf player, shocked experts - who insisted on wearing gloves to examine the tabernacle - when he told them that he had driven around for two weeks with it on his van's dashboard.

"When I touched it, it sent shivers through me," he said yesterday.

It was initially checked out by a dealer in Doncaster, who thinks it shows a Roman stabbing a Turk, a reference to the Crusades, as well as a priest carrying a cross. A second expert suggested that its origins could be traced back to the Orthodox Church, between 700 and 1200.

The door was found in North Yorkshire, close to Middleham Castle, the former home of Richard III, which dates back to the time of the Norman Conquest.

One theory is that it may have fallen into the possession of one of the influential residents that inhabited the castle, which is known as the Windsor of the North.

Roberts, who would not be drawn on how much it was worth, said: "I have never had such a wonderful response as when people see this panel."

- INDEPENDENT