An amateur historian has amassed a huge £50,000 collection of military memorabilia – in his dining room.
Ray Fricker, 67, has spent 14 years collecting roughly 900 pieces from the First and Second World Wars that now cover the room's walls and floor.
His fascination with modern history was sparked by finding World War Two-era helmets in derelict air raid shelters of demolished homes in Manchester as a boy.
And decades later, he created a dedicated ‘war room’ in his three-bed family home with machine guns, gas masks, carvings from POW camps and letters from soldiers.
Ray said despite the collection’s impressive value, his motivation has always been to look after the artefacts for future generations.
He said: “I don’t buy to make a profit – I buy to save.
“I’ve got letters, I’ve got diaries, and I’ve got stuff from prisoner of war camps, where people have made stuff.
“And I’ve got a shell that landed on the British side in World War One when they were battling. It went straight down into the dugouts, and it never went off.
“I love the chase, and once the chase is over, the piece goes in the war room – and it’s saved there.
“It’s just something you’ve got to do...but sometimes it can take a long time.”
Ray, who works part-time at a VW dealership, said his memorabilia collection began in 2010 after he purchased a tin hat, which he planned to turn into a clock.
But after inspecting the World War Two British protective gear, he realised it needed to be conserved – and he started buying up more vintage pieces.
He said: “I had one hat, so I put it in the war room.
“Then the next minute I had another one, and then another one. And my wife said, ‘I hope you’re not going to buy any more of these’.
“Before you knew it, I’d started collecting after getting the bug from when I was a kid.”
The roughly 13ft long by 9ft wide room in his Manchester home is now lined with items from countries such as Germany, Russia, France, Britain and the USA.
Ray has shrapnel-battered German helmets worn during D-Day, along with disarmed grenades, a minesweeping device and a 1940s-era radio.
He also has an original World War Two de-activated German MG 42 machine gun, a replica German mortar, which fires blanks, and a British Enfield rifle worth £600.
Ray further has a de-activated Russian Maxim machine gun, which was imported from the country, and is now valued at around £3,000.
But one of his most priceless items is a model of a wooden tank carved by World War Two soldier James Pardoe while interned at Stalag XX-A POW camp in Toruń, German-occupied Poland.
The infantryman from Scarborough, who served in the Prince of Wales's Own Regiment of Yorkshire, was in his 40s when he chiselled the sculpture inside the detention centre.
Ray said: “The barrel never got finished on the tank, probably because anything long and thin could be used as a weapon.
Ray Fricker, 67, has spent 14 years collecting roughly 900 pieces from the First and Second World Wars that now cover the room's walls and floor.
His fascination with modern history was sparked by finding World War Two-era helmets in derelict air raid shelters of demolished homes in Manchester as a boy.
And decades later, he created a dedicated ‘war room’ in his three-bed family home with machine guns, gas masks, carvings from POW camps and letters from soldiers.
Ray said despite the collection’s impressive value, his motivation has always been to look after the artefacts for future generations.
He said: “I don’t buy to make a profit – I buy to save.
“I’ve got letters, I’ve got diaries, and I’ve got stuff from prisoner of war camps, where people have made stuff.
“And I’ve got a shell that landed on the British side in World War One when they were battling. It went straight down into the dugouts, and it never went off.
“I love the chase, and once the chase is over, the piece goes in the war room – and it’s saved there.
“It’s just something you’ve got to do...but sometimes it can take a long time.”
Ray, who works part-time at a VW dealership, said his memorabilia collection began in 2010 after he purchased a tin hat, which he planned to turn into a clock.
But after inspecting the World War Two British protective gear, he realised it needed to be conserved – and he started buying up more vintage pieces.
He said: “I had one hat, so I put it in the war room.
“Then the next minute I had another one, and then another one. And my wife said, ‘I hope you’re not going to buy any more of these’.
“Before you knew it, I’d started collecting after getting the bug from when I was a kid.”
The roughly 13ft long by 9ft wide room in his Manchester home is now lined with items from countries such as Germany, Russia, France, Britain and the USA.
Ray has shrapnel-battered German helmets worn during D-Day, along with disarmed grenades, a minesweeping device and a 1940s-era radio.
He also has an original World War Two de-activated German MG 42 machine gun, a replica German mortar, which fires blanks, and a British Enfield rifle worth £600.
Ray further has a de-activated Russian Maxim machine gun, which was imported from the country, and is now valued at around £3,000.
But one of his most priceless items is a model of a wooden tank carved by World War Two soldier James Pardoe while interned at Stalag XX-A POW camp in Toruń, German-occupied Poland.
The infantryman from Scarborough, who served in the Prince of Wales's Own Regiment of Yorkshire, was in his 40s when he chiselled the sculpture inside the detention centre.
Ray said: “The barrel never got finished on the tank, probably because anything long and thin could be used as a weapon.
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FunTranscript
00:00Hiya, I'm Ray, come and see my war room, it's absolutely fantastic.
00:13So here we have some of the collection, British helmets, some mixed helmets from around the
00:18world.
00:19We've got the Anne Crank siren down at the bottom, we've got some ARP equipment and we've
00:25got the German helmet here which is from the First World War.
00:28We've got the 18-pounder which was found at the Somme, it's obviously deactivated.
00:38It all started in the 60s for me, we had a gang, five lads, great lads, we was walking
00:44down Ashland New Road one day, we noticed that the houses was all empty and it was actually
00:49up for being all flattened off so, like kids do, we went round the back and there was air
00:54aid shelters there, we went in the air aid shelters, rooting, I found a tin hat with
00:58the wardens hat, it was white with a black W on it, put that on my head, I said to the
01:02lads, yeah, get this on your head, went next door, found some more and we found some military
01:07jackets, so we had the military jackets on as well.
01:10So really, that was the start of it for me, I loved it and the smell of it, it was amazing
01:16and then this happened.
01:24This is actually from Stalag 20A concentration camp, it might look just like a piece of wood
01:30to anybody else but close looking at it, you can see it's got its little wheels, it's got
01:36the German markings, it's got the way in, the hatch, it's not got a cannon on it for
01:41a reason because it had been sharp, it could have been used as a weapon and it's really,
01:47really to me, priceless, there's not another one like it in the world, it's just a couple
01:51of blocks of wood, which is hard to find in any prison camp and he's managed to find
01:55this and make that and that probably kept his sanity all the way through the war.
02:01There's absolutely hundreds of items in here, what's it worth, well, if I told you that,
02:07I'd probably end up with a divorce.
02:10Very, very rare that people come in to see this collection because it's been kept secret,
02:16all this history in here, it's not about how much it's worth and I wouldn't sell it for
02:21it's time to share it and that's why I'm here, to share it with the people because I think
02:26it should be shared, not kept away in a closet like a car, it needs to be viewed and loved.