Vintage view: Coffers

Kya deLongchamps gives a quick run down on the precursor to the ATM — the family coffer — an item which is now an investment in itself.

IT APPEARS dark, Mediaeval and pregnant with dastardly possibilities in almost every Agatha Christie screen adaptation.

Generally, it’s staged on the first landing of the staircase in the great country house. It furnishes that void at the bottom of a towering Georgian window, feet planted in an Oriental runner supporting a vase of drooping tea-roses.