Yorkshire County Cricket Club have been handed an early Christmas present in the form of a priceless collection of memorabilia belonging to the late and great Wilfred Rhodes.

It has been donated to the club by Rhodes’ granddaughter Mrs Margaret Garton, who is the sole surviving member of the family.

The collection has been described by an expert as “the creme de la creme of cricketing memorabilia” and will no doubt take pride of place in the club’s new £300,000 museum, which is due to be opened in March.

It includes a large leather casket, shaped like a cricket ball, which was presented to the all-rounder by Lord Hawke, who was the county’s president at the time, when he retired from first-class cricket at the Scarborough Jubilee Festival in 1930.

Filled with chocolates, it was handed over on behalf of Rowntrees of York in appreciation of his great career.

There are 293 items in all, also including an autograph album with signatures from 45 Test and county teams who the White Rose legend played against.

Ron Deaton, a Yorkshire member and memorabilia specialist, has prepared the items for the club’s archives committee.

He said: “I have never seen anything like this before. It is just a dream.

“It is an honour and a privilege to have spent six weeks sifting through it all and it must be one of the most wonderful collections in existence.

“There are thousands of pieces of paper in all and every item is an absolute treasure. For me, it is like looking at the crown jewels.

“It is the creme de la creme of cricketing memorabilia from the greatest Yorkshire cricketer of the 20th century.”

Rhodes played between 1898-1932 and remains the club’s leading wicket taker with 3,598 victims.

The Huddersfield-born player started his career as a No 11 batsman but worked his way up the order to face the new ball.

He is currently the club’s fifth leading run-scorer with 31,075 and 46 hundreds to his name, Rhodes, who died at the age 95 and 252 days in July 1973, played 58 Test matches for England. He took 127 wickets with his left-arm spin, also scoring 2,325 runs.

Other items in the collection include five cricket balls significant to some of his most noteworthy achievements in the game, one of those being the one used for his 100th Test wicket at Adelaide in 1922.

There is also a photo album with snaps taken by Rhodes during his career, some of which were captured in India in the 1920s.

Mrs Garton, the donator, currently lives in Dorset. David Allan, the chairman of Yorkshire’s archives committee, said: “We are extremely grateful for her generosity in letting us have this marvellous collection.”