Can you beat these century-old Easter eggs?

Could these be the country’s oldest decorated Easter eggs?

Biggar man Robert Kerr reckons they’re a couple of crackers.

And, having been made just before the Titanic sank, he’d be shell-shocked if they could be beaten.

The pair of beauties date back to 1912 and were the treasured Easter playthings of his mum, Margaret McNeekin, and her twin sister, Henrietta.

The sisters, then just 11, were inseparable and the eggs were made for celebrating that Easter Sunday. They have that year and Margaret and Henrietta’s names on them.

“You couldn’t really get chocolate eggs in those days,” Robert, 70, told The Sunday Post.

“So what you did was hard boil eggs and stain them with tea.”

While rolling eggs was a hugely popular tradition, the pristine condition of the eggs suggests they never tumbled down a hill.

Robert, youngest of eight, says his mum wasn’t one for keeping things.

But his Aunt Henrietta kept all sorts of trinkets and the eggs were prized keepsakes.

“I was very close to my aunt and used to stay with her quite a bit,” says former panel beater Robert. “I remember seeing them around the house and when she died in 1976 they were going to be thrown out as part of the clearance.

“I’m a collector like her and couldn’t let that happen.”

Decorating and colouring eggs for Easter has been a popular custom in many countries since the Middle Ages.

Hen’s or duck’s eggs were decorated and painted in bright colours with egg-shaped toys for children coming in during the 17th Century.

The first chocolate Easter eggs were made in the early 19th Century with the first from leading manufacturer Cadbury not appearing until 1875, a couple of years after Fry’s.

The market was very slow in developing in the early years as Rowntree’s and Mars started producing their eggs.

Fancy packaging and mass marketing were much later developments although we now wolf our way through around £140 million-worth a year.

Robert has kept his century-plus-old eggs safely in a box for the past 38 years.

“I’m still wary of taking them out as I’d hate anything to happen to them,” he adds.

“My wife Margaret and I are just amazed that eggs boiled and decorated 102 years ago are still around.

“I wonder if anyone could beat it, but I can’t see it.”