Late grandad’s bizarre collection of 400 irons from around the world sells for £10,000
A LATE grandad’s bizarre collection of 400 irons from around the world is being sold for £10,000.
Martin “Iron Man” Matthews spent 35 years amassing a vast array of laundry contraptions — often displaying nerves of steel at customs.
But widow Trudy, 61, is now auctioning them — plus his barrel washing machine and mangle — after the retired gas engineer died in March aged 65.
The nurse and photographer told how she got a shock at his house on their first date in 1997. She recalled: “I was astonished to see a set of shelves, 6ft high by about 3ft wide, full of antique and vintage laundry irons.
“Apparently, it all started in the late 1980s when an elderly lady gave him an old iron and suggested he used it as a doorstop.”
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She said he once strolled through Gatwick carrying a ten pounder from Greece. He also had Canadian security officers creased up with laughter when he explained his two old irons.
Dad-of-two Martin, from Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, still bought more irons despite being diagnosed with fatal bone marrow disease.
Trudy is selling the collection, which may fetch £10,000 in Derbyshire this month, so others can enjoy them. She said: “He knew I wouldn’t keep them.”