£1m gift saves the family silver

A £1m charitable gift by a Norwich couple will safeguard two nationally-important collections of silver for future generations.

Colin and Susan Ticktum, who have lived in Norfolk for more than 30 years, are giving a period house in the centre of the city as a permanent home for their hugely-valuable silver collections.

Mr Ticktum, who has just published a definitive book on the history of Norwich silver, is determined to safeguard the collections and raise the profile of the city's heritage.

Norwich silver is very rare and there are only 250 secular examples of spoons, boxes, tankards and beakers which have survived since the assay office closed in 1702.

And Mr Ticktum, who has 20 items of Norwich hallmarked silver, is donating this collection to a new charitable trust with a house in Upper St Giles. In the past quarter of a century of collecting, he has acquired some very rare specimens, including the only four Norwich silver buttons to have survived.

He has built up another collection, which is conservatively valued at more than £500,000 if sold at auction, of about 500 spoons including examples of Scottish provincial silver.

He also has some very rare examples of silver spoons, which were made in Great Yarmouth, King's Lynn and Beccles.

The total value of the legacy of silver, which will be stored in a basement vault, and the house on the corner of Upper St Giles and Cow Hill, is estimated at more than £1m.

They will formally launch the new charitable trust later this month, coinciding with the publication of a 184-page book on Norwich Silver.

Although the Castle Museum has 100 items of Norwich-marked silver, there are very few items in private hands. The Queen was presented with a Norwich beaker by the city council when she opened County Hall, and screen actor Gregory Peck's widow has a superb silver tankard.

Mr and Mrs Ticktum, who moved to Norfolk in 1972, wanted to leave their silver to a charitable trust and to make the archive of more than 2,000 documents available for study. "We are not opening a museum because the house would never be suitable for large numbers of visitors," he said.

It was decided to leave the collection and the house on Cow Hill, which is just a few hundred yards from the site of the former Norwich assay office, to charity for several reasons.

Mr Ticktum was diagnosed a year ago with terminal cancer.

"My wife and I don't have any children and we don't have close relatives.

"At some point in time, you have to decide what you're going to do with it. Clearly, we could have sold the collections - but all that achieves is money."

FULL STORY - EDP Sunday

www.ticktum.silver.co.uk