An Antiques Roadshow guest was left speechless after discovering that a striking print by a celebrated Northern Irish artist could fetch a huge sum at auction.

The latest episode of the beloved BBC series was filmed at Shuttleworth House in Bedfordshire, where members of the public gathered with their treasured possessions to be valued by experts.

Art specialist Frances Christie was presented with a colourful seaside scene that immediately caught her attention.

'This is such a vibrant scene of loads of people gathered on a beach with lots of children riding on horses,' she explained.

'It's unmistakably the style of someone called Gladys Maccabe, who was probably Northern Ireland's most famous 20th-century artist.'

The guest revealed the piece had originally belonged to an elderly couple who were close friends of her parents.

'When they passed away, we were invited to choose an item that we'd like to keep and that just appealed to me,' she said.

'Lucky you!' Frances exclaimed, before detailing the extraordinary career of Gladys Maccabe, who was born in 1918 at the end of the First World War and lived almost a century.

'Colour and life, that is what Gladys Maccabe was all about,' she said.

The painter studied at art school in Belfast before the Second World War, where she 'came of age' as an artist.

But her legacy extended beyond her own canvases when she became a champion for women in the arts.

'She was a pretty amazing person,' Frances continued. 'She really recognised in Northern Ireland that there was a wealth of female talent and so she founded something called the Ulster Society of Women Artists, and she was its first president. So, she was a real promoter of her fellow artists.'

Turning back to the painting itself, Frances described its hallmarks. 'It's very typical of her style. It's oil on board. She was really confident with her colour and her line,' she noted. 

'She's used a black pigment to highlight the shapes of the horses and the people, and then she's used lots of different bright strokes to bring out the colours of both the sea in the background and the shore in the foreground.

'And then it's almost like a panoramic pattern of clothes in the midground, and I think it really draws you in.'

Frances finally delivered her verdict, and said the work could fetch between £1,200 and £1,800 at auction. The guest, clearly taken aback, was left momentarily lost for words.

'Well chosen!' Frances said warmly, to which the delighted owner replied: 'Okay, good! Yes, it is, yeah. Thank you very much.'

A recent episode saw a guest left shaken after learning the extraordinary value of her late partner's long-lost book - and uncovering its sinister secrets.

Expert Fuchsia Voremberg met a mother and son who had brought along a leather-bound tome with a remarkable past.

Fuchsia was immediately captivated. 'So it's a warm day here in London,' she told them, 'but as you pulled this beautiful 18th Century log book out of your bag, I felt the shiver of a sea breeze run over me.'

Asked about its origins, the woman explained: 'It was found in the attic of my partner's house near London.

'We brought it down to North Devon when he retired and the book got mislaid and we couldn't find it in the house. Sadly, he passed away last year, and after a further search, we found this book.'

Fuchsia revealed that what they had uncovered was no ordinary heirloom, but an 18th Century maritime journal belonging to a vessel named the Triton - a ship that once sailed under the mighty East India Company.

Delving into the journal's contents, Fuchsia read aloud a striking entry from 1793.

She said: 'There's a darker chapter where a man "committed his body to the deep and performed divine service". So it was a really risky business.

'I think if this was to come up at auction, I would expect it to fetch a price in the region of £2,000.'

The valuation left the pair momentarily speechless, before they gasped: 'Wow. That's amazing.' The elderly woman swayed slightly as the reality of the news sank in.

Antiques Roadshow is available to watch on BBC One and to stream on iPlayer.