The world’s oldest artificial Christmas tree has been discovered lying in a dusty box 140 years after it was made. The wooden tree, which measures 6ft-high and 4ft-wide, was recovered from a house clearance more than a decade ago. It was made by a carpenter who was a member of the wealthy Burchell family in Kettering, Northamptonshire, who built it in the 1870s. Original owner Janet Peck, 81, sold the tree to an antiques dealer ten years ago, along with a number of other items. Mrs Peck, from Burton Latimer, Northamptonshire, said, “We had the tree in our family for generations but were forced to put it away when we had small children for safety reasons because it had candle holders on it. My grandmother told me it was probably made by her brother Robert who was a carpenter. He was born in the mid-1800s and would certainly have carved it around 1870. I remember it on display as a child in my grandmother’s large three-storey home in Desborough and when she died I inherited it. We tried to get it restored in the 1960s but it was a bit too dangerous to have as we had small children running around so we put it in a trunk away in the attic.” She added, “It is wonderful to think that the tree is a world record. It was certainly made as an artificial Christmas tree and used every year for many generations.” Antiques dealer David Payne, 57, bought the tree from Mrs Peck in 2006. He said, “I bought a job lot of old boxes and junk from Mr and Mrs Peck 10 years ago. They were antiques collectors and used to contact me from time to time to sell bits and bobs. I just bought a load of things, including boxes, a few years ago. I looked at the tree at first but it needed repairing so disregarded it completely until I was sorting through all the stuff a few weeks ago. I put it together and it’s almost completely intact. It was actually more stable than I first thought so I thought I would contact my local church to ask if it could be displayed in the Christmas tree festival. I have never seen anything like it before. It is definitely pre-World War One and it could well be Victorian. Judging by the style and the age of the wood and the metal screws, it is likely it was made in the mid-1800s.” The current Guinness World Record for the oldest fake Christmas tree is a 14ins high decoration which has been in the same family from Bath, which dates back 130 years to 1886.