OF all the heirlooms Hilary Kay has been asked to value for Antiques Roadshow, there is one that sticks in her mind.

Presented with a stuffed dog in a glass case at a roadshow in Norwich, she was not sure what to say.

But slowly a story began to emerge.

She says: “The person told me a story of a man who was hanged and how the dog used to go and wait at his cell even though he was no longer there.

“The most unlikely things can be brought to life with a local story.”

It is this, and not necessarily the monetary value of an object, that antiques experts such as Hilary look for when on a roadshow.

When the popular BBC programme comes to the picturesque Layer Marney Tower on May 12, she is urging residents to not only bring along their valuables, but also things that have a local or personal story, or even objects that are unusual.

“One of the best moments of a roadshow is when someone puts something on your table you have never seen before.” She says: “It’s one of the most exciting moments of the day. It makes you think and try to work out where it fits. It’s wonderful when that happens.”

Hilary, who has acted as an expert on the programme for 33 years, hopes with Colchester and north Essex’s rich history there will be plenty of fascinating objects for her and her colleagues to view.

Every now and then, there comes a big money object. One that sticks in Hilary’s mind is an automaton, an animated doll with a clockwork mechanism, she saw in the 1980s.

She says: “It stood about three feet tall and I put about £5,500 to £6,000 on it, which was big money back then. The owner sold it in the mid 1990s and made £84,000.”

The last time the Antiques Roadshow team visited Essex was in 2003 at Cressing Temple Barns, in Braintree, when experts valued a Chippendale tripod table at £35,000.

Hilary admits the antiques business is suffering from the financial downturn just like any other industry. Whereas a few years ago pieces were fetching large prices, these days it is a bit more reserved.

She says: “People are also realising maybe monetary value is not the most important thing about the object and are bracing themselves when they have the piece valued. Just like the property market, antiques have a cycle and things turn around again.”

More than 2,000 people can turn up during a roadshow, each with an average of five prized possessions. This gives the 20 antiques experts an average of 10,000 objects to value in one day.

From that phenomenal number, 40 or 50 are selected to be filmed for the BBC show.

Hilary admits its a tiring day, but exciting all the same. She explains: “The start of the day is incredibly exciting. We have a long queue stretching to the horizon and the experts are revved up and raring to go. Everyone starts to flag at about 6pm. People are tired after standing on the hard ground for five hours and we are tired because we are looking at thousands of objects. By the final hour of the day everyone is feeling really jaded.”

Hilary, the daughter of a chartered engineer, who grew up on a farm in Buckinghamshire, was keen to escape to the excitement of London as a youngster.

“I knew I wanted to be involved with beautiful and challenging objects, but I didn’t want to be a museum curator, I enjoyed the fact that the objects were worth something,” explains Hilary.

“I was 20 when I helped set up a department in Sotheby’s and then I was given that department to run.”

It is seeing and handling antiques that Hilary loves best.

“I would encourage the folk of Colchester to bring things to the roadshow they are not sure of and which look like a challenge, because we love a challenge,” she says.