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On a cloudy day in late summer 2009, I was walking along the River Thames at Hampton Court when I noticed several stonemasons working on the Palace.

I got chatting to them and asked what they were doing. They explained that they were replacing several badly weathered, hand-carved stone gargoyle ridge tiles.

I asked what they had done with the originals they had removed.

They told me they had put them in the skip!

Horrified, I asked if I could have a look at them. Although the head of one of the gargoyles had been knocked off, the others were still complete, albeit very weathered.

I asked if I could buy them from the stonemasons and, of course, they agreed.

The rest, as they say, is history!