£5 chair holds £5,000 secret diamond stash

A woman has discovered the source of the diamonds her husband's been giving her for the last four years - he found them hidden in an old chair.

Angela Milner-Brown, 50, and husband Angus, 47, bought the old armchair for £5 at auction ten years ago, but stuck it in the attic as they couldn't afford to get it reupholstered.

When they finally got round to it six years later, Mr Milner-Brown had a nice surprise. Under several layers of fabric were £5,000-worth of diamond jewellery.

"My husband is very romantic so he decided to keep the items secret and surprise me with them over the next few celebratory occasions for us," Mrs Milner-Brown tells the Daily Record. "It was a really lovely thing to do."

She received a diamond ring as a wedding anniversary present, with a pair of earrings following on Valentine's Day and a brooch at Easter.

The story came to light when the couple had the jewellery and chair valued by the BBC's Antiques Roadshow in New Lanark - although they don't intend to sell.

"They told us that the diamond jewellery and the chair were worth around £5000 together," says Mrs Milner-Brown. "It was an amazing, wonderful discovery."

As she adds, "You just never know what you'll find in an old piece of furniture." Two years ago, for example, a decorative jade plate found in an old cabinet was sold for £360,000.

And this time last year, a US man found thousands of dollars stuffed behind a door panel in a car he'd bought at a police auction.

Things get a bit more difficult when the finder has some way of identifying the rightful owner. In 2014, for example, two students discovered $41,000 hidden in a couch they'd bought at a charity store for $20.

However, when they discovered a woman's name on one of the envelopes, they felt the right thing to do was track her down and return it.

Under UK law, anyone finding money or valuables is obliged to take 'reasonable steps' to return them. However, there's little chance of that in the Milner-Browns' case.