Not since the much-lamented departure of the Robert Opie Collection from its home in Gloucester docks many yonks ago has there been such a fantastic display of Old Everyday Stuff.

Better still, it's just off M5 Junction 19 (Gordano services), which is to say just at the bit where south Bristol turns into countryside.

This is Oakham Treasures, and it's just this week opened to the public. Everyone who visits this place will have their own favourite bit. Me, I can't be sure. It's a toss-up between the big model aeroplanes or the life-sized (-ish) woolly polar bear which was is believed to have been used to advertise Fox's Glacier Mints at Harrods in the 1930s.

Or possibly the Easter eggs. They've got these chocolate Easter eggs which are decades old and which aren't wrapped in anything and they've not melted or gone mouldy or even got a bit of a bloom on them. How do they do that? If it comes to that, how come all these old fruitcakes and Christmas cakes are older, yet better preserved, than me?

The collection is housed in an immense air-conditioned farm building, and it's all been collected by one man over the last 40 years or so. Farmer Keith Sherrell apparently started out by collecting tractors (as you do), but then got into old advertising materials, and then groceries, booze, fags, cleaning products, toys ... Basically, if it was everyday household stuff from the last 100 years or so, he'd have it.

"He'd just read the papers and say, 'Ooh, there's an auction!' and he'd just go and buy things," explains his daughter Helen, who along with her two sisters helps run the family business. "Then four or five years ago the question came up as to what we'd do with these sheds out the back and it just sort of went from there."

So when you visit, you get to see a lot of old tractors, which is probably brilliant if you're into tractors. There's a fair bit of other farm machinery, too, including sheep-shearing stuff, steam engines, an old threshing-machine, an American fire engine from the 1920s ... All of this is impressive enough, but this doesn't really prepare you for the massive assault on the eyes mounted by floor-to-ceiling displays of old advertising material.

But the real attraction is the household stuff. This is packed into huge old glass display cabinets and organised into fully-stocked historic 'shops', complete with mahogany counters. The shops include a haberdashery, chemist's shop, off licence, ironmongers, tobacconist, sweet shop and a vast grocery store. And yes, many of those food packages, tins, bottles of booze, cigarette packets and sweet packets really do contain their original contents.

Naturally it includes a lot of products and advertising material relating to local brands and companies, including Babycham, Wills tobacco, Harveys sherry as well as lots of chocolate from Frys.

While a lot of the things here are rare and valuable, what's going to attract most visitors is the fact that so much of it used to be very ordinary indeed. You could well end up spending a whole day here looking closely at everything, and for parents and grandparents it'll all be very nostalgic. Then you can buy some stuff from the farm shop on the way out; everything there is well within its sell-by date.

# Oakham Treasures is at Portbury Lane, Portbury, Bristol BS20 7SP, open Tues-Sat 10am-5pm (last admission 3.30pm), closed Sun, Mon & Bank Holidays. Admission £6.50 adult/£5 senior, child (age 6-16)/£15 family (2 adults + 3 children). Ffi: 01275 375236 www.oakhamtreasures.co.uk