Paul Bence, the managing director of George Bence & Sons, was so intrigued when he heard about an ancient cooker in an old farmhouse that he decided to go and check it out.
He made the trip out to Bishop’s Cleeve to Home Farm to look at the Georgian range cooker that his company had made in the 1880s.
The Gilder family, who own the farm, bought the cooker from Bence’s and amazingly it is sill in good working order.
Paul was so excited by the discovery that he hopes to persuade the Gilders to let him buy the cooker back so that they can put it on display at his firm’s showroom in Fairview Road.
He said: “We’ve been going since 1854 and this cooker would have been sold by my great-great-grandfather.
“I would like to get it back and put it in our new retail showroom. We’ve got some modern pieces in there but this would really be a showpiece.
“It’s nice for us to look back at our roots. We’re very proud to see that something we sold 130 years ago is still alive and kicking.”
He also said that the firm could have given the incredibly durable product a double lifetime guarantee.
Nick Gilder said that he would have to talk to his family to see if they would be willing to sell the cooker.
New residents are due to move into the farmhouse shortly and they will be the first people to use the cooker in many years; by amazing circumstance, one of the new residents works as a range cooker technician.