THE silver swan at the Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle has a special significance for 76-year-old Margaret Asquith.

Though now the museum's most distinctive symbol and used as part of its marketing ploy, the automaton was once - as she remembers well - nothing more than a mass of puzzling pieces packed in boxes found in the cellar.

Mrs Asquith's father, Thomas Wake, was curator from 1946, when she was 14, until 1958, and her family lived in the building.

It was her father who found tarnished parts of the mechanical silver swan packed away in a cellar. The find led to months of painstaking renovation to reassemble what is now the museum's most famous item.

Mrs Asquith, who had helped clean the segments, remembers seeing and hearing it work for the first time. "I will always remember the first sight of the little fish struggling in the swan's mouth," she said.

During her teenage years, she carried out various duties, including being a tea lady and helping with the administration.

Free time was spent sunbathing on the roof with her sisters and playing tennis in the grounds.

A highlight of her years there was serving coffee to the Queen Mother during a royal visit in 1956.

"Before she left, she thanked me personally, which I thought was very sweet of her," she said.

During a recent visit to her old home, Mrs Asquith heard about recent developments at the Bowes, which has just received a £3.3m Heritage Lottery grant. She said: "I can see my father looking down and I think he would have been tremendously thrilled with the museum today.