DESPITE preparing for one of his biggest sales of the year, Devizes auctioneer Alan Aldridge still spared time to give a talk on Thursday in aid of Dorothy House.

Mr Aldridge's firm, Henry Aldridge & Son, has established a reputation as the most esteemed specialist in memorabilia connected with the doomed ocean liner Titanic and its sister ships, Olympic and Britannic.

In his talk, which raised over £125 for the Gazette and Herald's Dorothy House campaign, Mr Aldridge explained how his firm had become involved with the Titanic in the first place.

He said: "We are about as far from the sea as you can get, but we came to be the biggest sellers of Titanic items in the world."

The family were already interested in the ocean liner because Mr Aldridge's son Andrew, who is now a partner in the business, had always been fascinated in it as a child and Mr Aldridge would pick up artefacts connected with it whenever he attended a collectors' sale.

Then while engaged in his hobby of metal detecting at a site near Winterslow, Salisbury, Mr Aldridge was approached by a man who introduced himself as Ian and they chatted about history and historical items.

Ian' turned out to be the Earl of Rothes, whose grandmother had been a passenger aboard the Titanic on its fateful maiden voyage.

She and her maid were among the passengers who escaped on a lifeboat under the aegis of steward Thomas Jones. The countess in gratitude sent Mr Jones a pocket watch and the two corresponded until the countess's death many years later.

Mr Jones had presented the countess's maid, Roberta Mayonne, with his enamel hat badge and she wore it on her dress for the rest of her life.

Through the good offices of the Earl of Rothes, Aldridges were able to sell the pocket watch and eventually sold the hat badge too and it made £17,000 at auction.

Mr Aldridge said: "No one ever said the Titanic was unsinkable but it was designed to be able to withstand head-on collisions.

"The big mistake was not hitting the iceberg head on. The Titanic was as high as an 18-storey building and the iceberg towered over it. And that was only the ten per cent that showed above the water line."