Wessex Auction Rooms

The Singer 222K Featherweight is rated as one of the best sewing machines ever made.

Carved from the heart of the toa or ironwood tree, long pole clubs with scalloped blades (akatara) are associated with Rarotonga and Atiu on the Cook Islands.

Before match programmes grew into the glossy mini-magazines of today they were relatively simple affairs – most just a single sheet printed on both sides.

This small watercolour by Irish artist Mildred Anne Butler (1858-1941) titled 'The Garden, Kilkenny' sold for an unexpected £2500 at Wessex Auction Rooms (17% buyer’s premium) in Chippenham.

The sale at Wessex Auction Rooms (17% buyer’s premium) in Chippenham on October 17 included this lot catalogued as ‘a retro banded glass decanter and glasses together with a set of similar shot glasses’. The estimate was just £15-25.

Although a smaller affair than the much better-known Isle of Wight festival of the same year, the Bath Festival of Blues and Progressive Music, held on June 27-28, 1970, at the Shepton Mallet showground, boasted perhaps the greatest UK music festival line-up of all time.

Estimated at just £60-80, a rare Ericsson telephone sold for £10,500 (plus 17% buyer’s premium) at Wessex Auction Rooms in Chippenham.

Estimated at a token £100-200, a large twin fusee wall clock sold to an online bid of £2400 (plus premium) at Wessex Auction Rooms (17% buyer’s premium) in Chippenham.