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No-one could accuse the Sultans’ jewellers of being unambitious. The Chelengk presented to Nelson after the Battle of the Nile makes the point. The turban jewel – the first ever presented to a non-Muslim – has a story all of its own. The sprays at the top represent the thirteen French ships captured by Nelson and the British fleet in the battle; the clustering enamelled flowers – each with a diamond in its centre – are set “en tremblant”, which means they are mounted on very fine gold wire, so that the flowers bob and “tremble” as the wearer walks. And the brilliant, crown-like cluster of diamonds in the middle has a clockwork mechanism, so that it turns to catch your eye, diamonds sparkling as they languidly rotate. Does anyone know the Turkish for bling? Because it looks like the Sultans invented it!

It may look like an instrument of torture, devised by – to quote P.G. Wodehouse in another context – “the nastier-minded members of the Borgia family for people they had a particular grudge against”! But in fact it’s a conformateur, designed to capture the exact shape of your head. Lock’s then use that outline to make you a hat with a precise fit. It’s needed because heads, like humans, come in all shapes and sizes. The conformateur has dozens of pins which rest gently around your head in just the right place for your hatband. The shape is then transferred, scaled down, to the top of the device, which uses a mirror image arrangement of pins to mimic your head shape. You end up with a small card on which your bonce is revealed to all for the comic blob it is.

Here we are in Lock’s of St James’, close by St James Palace in the centre of London. This is Roger Stephenson, the present Deputy Chairman of the famous hatters. His family has been in business on this site for over 300 years – making them members of the ‘Tercentenary Club’, for just such businesses. (The oldest – a Devon butcher!) Lock’s chose well – very handy for a Royal needing a splendid hat! Among the treasures on show in the shop are the wooden former used to prepare the crown for the Queen’s coronation, and the precise details from Nelson in an order for a new bicorn hat. Which were of course used to make the new hat adorning the fabulous Chelengk. As well as the head measurements of many famous people. But hang on – how do you measure a head..?

Joining us to marvel at the Chelengk coming back to life was Joanna Hardy, fine jewellery expert. She’s an ‘Antiques Roadshow’ regular, either (gently) dashing the hopes of inquisitive jewellery owners, or leaving them and the crowds around them gasping. One of her recent valuations: £30,000 or more at auction. Joanna’s particular interest in the Nelson project was to study what the Chelengk project could reveal about how jewels were made 300 years or so ago. One difference is that the diamonds at that time were mainly sourced from India – the great South African diamond fields had yet to be discovered. These 18th century sparklers were also cut differently from modern jewels. The extra sparkle Joanna brought to our film was an infectious enthusiasm, bringing the story to life even for those without much interest in “a girl’s best friend!”

This is the master goldsmith who brought Nelson’s Chelengk back to life – working in a fantastically Dickensian workshop “somewhere in London”, up several creaky flights of stairs in an attic room filled with the tools of his trade. And what tools they are. For example, he has a flat metal block, with dozens of precisely milled holes driven through it, used to draw out gold wire – date-stamped ‘1771’! Vintage diamonds – all authentically 18th Century themselves – were collected to create the gorgeous, sparkling spray of the Chelengk “aigrette” – a jewel so called because it looks a little like an egret. This workshop has been producing fabulous jewellery since the 18th Century – continuously, so the Chelengk is but the latest in a long line. You can view the work as it happened in the film ’Nelson’s Lost Jewel’.

The story of the jewel is told in a new book by the author and fine art expert Martyn Downer (picture), former Sotheby’s auctioneer and specialist in Nelsoniana – the much sought-after relics of Britain’s naval hero. In his relentless searching for items of value for Sotheby’s, Martyn had found a treasure trove of such relics, at the home of descendants of the Admiral’s close friend Alexander Davison. In a red morocco leather case were letters and artefacts once Nelson’s – and, most extraordinary, a silken purse full of golden guineas, on the Admiral’s person when he fell at Trafalgar, marked with blood from the battle. That led to Martyn’s extraordinary book, ‘Nelson’s Purse’ – and now to a new work no less fascinating, ‘Nelson’s Lost Jewel’. Along with the book, comes the new Chelengk – reborn at the hands of a master craftsman.