A roll of woodblock wallpaper found in an old farmhouse and kept in an attic for 40 years was valued at £3000 by a wallpaper specialist antique expert.

When the roll was presented to expert Mark Hill on an episode of Antiques Roadshow, he was stunned that a whole roll of the 1904 wall covering had been found.

The ornate wallpaper had been created by famous late-Victorian illustrator Walter Crane but was found by the guest of the show over 40 years ago as part of a weekend job he had clearing the top flour of an oast house.

The farmer who owned the building wanted any objects that would burn to be burned and everything else to be put to one side, but the guest was drawn to the wallpaper roll and kept it for 40 years in a poster roll former used for a Debbie Harry poster because he did not know what to do with it.

This meant that the roll was kept in ‘sensational condition’ with none of the fading that comes with similarly dated examples of woodblock wallpaper, ensuring that the golds, greens and blues of the wallpaper remained exceptionally vivid.

Whilst Mr Crane himself is better known as a children’s book illustrator, including for editions of Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser, The Happy Prince and Other Stories by Oscar Wilde and a version of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, he worked in a range of mediums, including wallpaper.

Whilst Mr Crane’s motifs and art style would become highly influential, little of that is seen in the wallpaper roll, which instead resembles Classical Revival in its style.

What makes it special beyond the design itself is that a whole roll was found, whilst in most cases, only fragments or pieces still exist from designs of that period.