WHEN Rodney Tennant was voted UK auctioneer of the year he knew his grandfather would have been proud of him.

Edmund Tennant established the family firm in Middleham in the late nineteenth century and, two generations later, the company competes favourably with the London auction houses of Sotheby's and Christie's.

Its offices in Harrogate and purpose-built auction centre opened nine years ago at Leyburn, see hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of antiques and other goods sold to buyers from around the globe.

Rodney Tennant, who now runs the company with his brother, John, was brought up in the business.

"I have been working and learning the ropes since I was little; it's in the blood," he said.

He is modestly proud of his title of auctioneer of the year, bestowed at the British Antiques and Collectables Awards in London last month.

BBC Antiques Roadshow specialist Eric Knowles - whose face is familiar around the Leyburn centre - chaired the judging committee which looked at the selling techniques, styles and knowledge of sale items of four shortlisted nominees.

Adam Schoon, an auctioneer with Tennant's and a member of the BACA committee - but not involved in passing judgement on his employer's proficiency - feels good auctioneering involves more than a touch of stagecraft.

"Auctioneering is, in a sense, theatre but you are in a hard commercial world dealing with bids and money," he said. "One person said the other day that they thought Rodney's timing was superb. He just leaves a nice gap of a few seconds to wait for anyone who is dithering to make up their mind."

The award came a year after Tennant's was voted best regional auction house and ten years after the construction of its Leyburn base.

The lure of the London antiques trade took Mr Tennant away from Wensleydale in 1972.

"I intended to spend a year in the London auction rooms and ended up staying for three years," he said. "Then I realised that my long-term future was back with the family business and in 1975 I returned."

The search for a location for a new saleroom began shortly afterwards and, eventually, the centre was built on the outskirts of the town and opened by business guru Sir John Harvey-Jones on September 1, 1993.

"In identifying a site, we looked at all the issues that would affect our customers and all the problems of the old saleroom, such as adequate parking and easy access," says Mr Tennant, who lives at Middleham. "We provided toilets and a restaurant as well as 40,000 square feet of saleroom."

Like most businesses, the antiques trade is influenced by the highs and lows of the global economy and its experts are quick to react to financial trends.

"What we have done in the light of pessimism in the general economy is to keep prices low so that almost everything sells," said Mr Schoon. "We hope for at least 90 to 99 per cent sell-out in our main catalogue sales. It really reinforces that something is only worth what someone is prepared to pay for it."

However, falling stock prices were not all bad news for the business.

"People look at antiques when the stock market is poor," said Mr Schoon. "These are tangible assets and antiques, like property, are a pretty good long-term investment, especially good English furniture of almost any period."

Competition at sales is stiff with massive interest from across Europe and America. Two Swedish collectors were particularly interested in model ships and prints from the defunct Cammell Laird shipyards which turned up at last weekend's summer catalogue sale. Their interest sparked that of other European buyers and the collection realised healthy prices.

Three large catalogue sales are held annually, with specialist and smaller sales almost every week. The logistics of accepting, displaying, valuing, researching and cataloguing is immense and preparations for a major sale take about three months.

As in any area of life, fashions come and go in the antiques world. Prices for Titanic memorabilia rocketed following the release of the Hollywood film three years ago and anything with a royal theme has been popular this year.

Spotting these trends early is an asset for auction houses and collectors and Mr Schoon predicts the pendulum is about to swing towards Fifties' and Sixties' items.

But the Tennant's centre is more than an auction house. Its community role as a meeting venue is growing and it has become something of a tourist attraction in Leyburn.

"We have tours and groups arriving all the time," says Mr Tennant. "Last week we had coachloads, including 50 members of a ladies' group from Doncaster who came to look round."

The centre will also look familiar to viewers of several television antiques shows, including Activity Superstore, Going Going Gone and the BBC's Bargain Hunt.

"Four or five television programmes have been filmed here and Eric Knowles and other well-known experts regularly hold events here," said Mr Tennant.

He has also developed the company's role in helping charities and he acts as voluntary auctioneer for 12 different causes.

"In one night, we raised more than £100,000 for the Variety Club of Great Britain, which bought three or four Sunshine coaches.