The entrance is not quite what you expect. In through the carpet showroom, past the towering rolls of bargain wool and nylon mix and follow the signs tentatively to a small door at the back. Is this really the Antiques Centre?

Then you open the door on a vast room full of amazing and incongruous pieces. A model of a jumbo jet hangs from the ceiling, along with some enormous and expensive lampshades. There's a lot of early 20th Century oak furniture, enough chaises longues for a host of delicate Victorian misses, cabinets of china, silver photo frames, Victorian scrap screens, six-foot high cast iron garden ornaments, a breast plate and a rocking horse, all in a large space the size of a small supermarket.

It is, you realise, the right place.

The Leyburn Antiques and Collectables Centre opened only a matter of weeks ago. It's in the old Peter Black factory, fairly clearly, if incongruously sign-posted, on the Leyburn/Bedale road, just a handy few hundred yards from Tennant's Auction Centre. It's the brainchild of Paul Ashford, who lives just up the road and who has had long had antiques businesses in Skipton and York.

Not all the items in the new centre are his but also include stock from a number of other local dealers.

"There are over twenty different dealers represented," he says "I wanted to cater for all tastes and get a large selection under one roof."

Unlike other similar centres, the items are not grouped by dealer but rather higgledly-piggledy - always more intriguing and appealing..

So a 19th Century Indian wood carving at £2,500 is only across the way from a pine washing posser that your granny might have used, though she might not have paid £36 for it. A Victorian polyphone - a sort of early gramophone - complete with discs is £2,500, while just a little way away a yellow and white Sindy doll plastic sink is £12.

"Plenty of variety, makes it more interesting."

And just when you're thinking that maybe your childhood was full of collectables, you spot in a far corner an open wardrobe door with a tantalising glimpse of fur coats. It could so very easily lead to another world.

A French lady recently bought some fur coats. They're still fashionable there. Charities keen to offload them from their shops get a donation in return.

Clearly, the centre is designed to appeal to those attending sales at Tennants.

But Paul Ashford hopes to bring lots of antiques-lovers into the Dales to the benefit of all.

"The more there are, the more people will come, because there's more chance that they will find something that appeals to them. Think of a street with lots of restaurants, it will always be packed with people wanting to eat. That's the idea I'm working on."

He's also in the process of producing an antiques trail - a guide to the shops and centres in the Dales which should give more people an incentive to a day out in the area. Wensleydale could well become one of the main antiques centres of Britain.

And what about those lampshades, for which you would need ceilings on a seriously grand scale?

"They came from the Gleneagles Hotel and twelve of them were immediately snapped up by a hotel in Ireland."

There are just six left, so anyone whose ceilings would benefit had better hurry.

* Leyburn Antiques and Collectables Centre, Harmby Road, Leyburn. Tel: 01969 625555. Open 10.30-4.30pm seven days a week.