Bargain Hunt star Charles Hanson threatened to put ‘burning embers’ on his wife during a row and held her in a headlock when she was pregnant, a court heard.

Rebecca Hanson said he made the ‘nasty’ comment when she complained he had put too many logs on the fire at their £1.5million Derby home.

Ms Hanson, who gave evidence from behind a screen on Tuesday, said Hanson, 46, would regularly ‘overpack the fire’ causing logs to end up falling out, which she thought was dangerous.

She said the couple were kneeling down in front of the fire as she tried to rearrange the logs when he threatened her ‘if I don’t stop complaining’.

She told the court about the 2021 incident: ‘I made a note that Charles threatened to put burning embers from the fire on me.

‘He did quite a lot of dangerous behaviour around the house. Every time he made fire he would overpack the fire and logs would end up falling out the fire.

‘I would get upset because it was dangerous behaviour. I was trying to make it better. We both knelt down in front of the fire and he threatened me. His voice was nasty.’

Hanson, who runs an auction house in Etwall, Derbyshire, and is a regular on daytime shows Bargain Hunt, Antiques Road Trip and Flog It!, is on trial accused of assault occasioning actual bodily harm, assault by beating and controlling or coercive behaviour between December 2015 and June 2023.

Bargain Hunt star Charles Hanson, pictured outside Derby Magistrates’ Court, has been accused of threatening to put ‘burning embers’ on his wife during a row

The auctioneer and his wife Rebecca are seen here outside their Derbyshire home

Hanson, who runs an auction house in Etwall, Derbyshire, and is a regular on shows Bargain Hunt, Antiques Road Trip and Flog It!, is on trial accused of assault occasioning ABH

The auctioneer, who arrived at court accompanied by his mother Gillian, has denied the charges.

Ms Hanson, a diagnostic radiographer, was granted special measures, which meant she could give evidence hidden by a curtain at Derby Crown Court on Tuesday.

Judge Martin Hurst told jurors this was ‘typical in cases of this nature’.

Ms Hanson, who married the auctioneer in 2010, told the court he had assaulted her on 14 or 15 occasions during their marriage, including leaving her ‘paralysed with fear’ when he put her in a headlock during a row when she was pregnant.

She told the court he ‘just went for me’ after she threw an empty cappuccino box on the floor during a row at their home.

Recalling the incident in 2012 she said Mr Hanson had undergone an operation for testicular cancer.

She said it was ‘quite common’ for Mr Hanson to be ‘extra irritable and angry’ when he was ill.

She told the court: ‘I can’t remember what we were arguing about. I was in my dressing gown.

The auctioneer, seen outside Derby Crown Court last week, has denied the charges he faces

Ms Hanson, who married the auctioneer in 2010, told the court he had assaulted her on 14 or 15 occasions during their marriage – they are pictured here at home in August 2014

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‘I had been really ill during the pregnancy. He was in a bad mood. We were arguing about something.’

She said she threw the empty box on the floor which landed in front of Mr Hanson’s feet.

‘He just went for me,’ she said. She said he ran towards where she was standing and she turned to ‘protect her baby’ and he put his arm around her neck.

‘It felt like a very long time but in reality it was probably about four seconds… I froze, I was petrified and in shock,’ she said, adding: ‘He wasn’t trying to choke me. he was trying to control me.’

She said afterwards they both ‘just stood there’, saying: ‘I think he was shocked at what he had done as well.

‘I completely froze, I was paralysed with fear. I did not scream. I think he was shocked at what he had done, especially as I was pregnant’. 

Ms Hanson said she later lost the baby- and when recalling an incident in either 2014 or 2015 when he grabbed her, she told the court: ‘Charles was upset, angry for some reason. It was the evening.

‘I can’t remember what the argument was about but he ended up grabbing my arm. He held me. I remember thinking what the heck are you doing – he just held me and grabbed me really hard.’

Charles Hanson (pictured) is accused of assault occasioning actual bodily harm, assault by beating and controlling or coercive behaviour between December 2015 and June 2023

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She went on: ‘This is what shocked me, when I looked at my arm and saw the fingerprints on my arm that had gone through a thick woolly jumper.

‘Really painful, it really hurts. Charles left the room and I just rang my dad in floods of tears.’

Asked by prosecutor Stephen Kemp why she did not call the police, she replied: ‘I always say I am going to call the police and he knows I never will.

‘When it starts off,  you just hope it is going to end, he apologises – his mother says she will speak to him. You think it is going to get better.’

Recalling another incident in March 2020 during Covid lockdown, she told how he threw a cordless landline phone at her.

Ms Hanson said: ‘Lockdown was a bit of a nightmare for us as we were stuck in the house together. He was angry, he gets angry a lot. I was sat on the sofa – he was angry again.

‘It was like a joke to him when he threw it at me. it hit my leg. It wasn’t hard enough to make a bruise.’

On another occasion she said she was crying and he started filming her on his phone.

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She said: ‘I guess to ridicule me, he tells me off about my behaviour quite a lot. I got even more upset, I tried to get the phone off him – I said, “Stop filming me”. I got the phone and he grabbed the phone and grabbed my wrist and dug his nails in.’

Jurors were told Ms Hanson had sent pictures of bruises and red marks she had suffered to her mother.

Asked why, she replied: ‘I was so scared it was getting more and more regular, I was scared he was going to find out [about the photographs] – I needed to keep some kind of record with someone I trusted.’

Hanson was arrested at their home in Quarndon, near Derby, in June 2023.

During a police interview, he accepted that at times he raised his voice but denied ever putting his wife into a headlock. 

He said he had never caused her any injury and he denied having grabbed, poked or squeezed her.

Jurors were told that the offence of ‘coercive control’ only came into force in December 2015.

Hanson met his wife through friends in 2008 and and wed two years later in a traditional service at All Saints’ Church in Mackworth, Derby, in front of 150 guests.

The trial continues.