Cumbria

Further lots from ancient country seat star alongside a stellar specialist collection.

Leering 4ft 7in (1.4m) out from the saleroom wall and with a 4ft 2in (50cm) antlers spread, a massive taxidermy moose head and shoulders was the major trophy at the best-yet biannual Country and Sporting sale at Mitchells (22% buyer’s premium).

Now handsomely bound in full red morocco and contained in slipcases, a set of first-edition copies of what are collectively known as ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’ of CS Lewis led a Thomson Roddick (18% buyer’s premium) sale of October 7 with a bid of £3400 from a buyer on thesaleroom.com.

Bid to a much higher than expected £4000 on August 19 at Thomson Roddick (18% buyer’s premium) was a lot offering 10 volumes of pamphlets, offprints, reports, legal evidence, etc, relating to licensing laws and the campaign to regulate consumption in the UK.

This Victorian snake necklace is one of the best of its kind to appear on the regional market in recent memory.

William Billingsley (1758-1828), a key figure in the history of both English and Welsh porcelain, left the Derby factory in 1795 yearning to create the finest, whitest and most translucent porcelain.

A group of bird books were a feature of a sale held by Thomson Roddick (18% buyer’s premium) in Carlisle.

Works by the Zinkeisen sisters continue to bring demand at auctions around the country.

Trying to set a water-speed record is one of sport’s most hazardous competitions – with a high fatality rate as a result.

Antiques on High Cumbrian branch now open

A Mitchells (22% buyer’s premium) sale included selected contents from Greystoke Castle near Penrith – home to the Howard family for over 500 years.

Drawings by the great fell-walking guidebook author catch the mood of escapism

Adrian Gilmour, co-owner of the Hungerford Arcade, is thrilled at news that non-essential retail can reopen in April.

This silver teapot has London hallmarks for 1792 and a maker’s mark for silversmith Michael Plummer who worked out of Gutter Lane, London, from 1791-95.

The surprise lot at Thomson Roddick (18% buyer’s premium) was one in which the principal attraction may well have been a penny broadside of 1826.

Gold pin awarded to Second World War Polish pilot later executed after the Great Escape

It was not in the best of conditions, but an unusual cartographic lot in an August 6 sale at Thomson Roddick (17.5% buyer’s premium) of Carlisle sold at £420.

A group of three watercolours depicting Indian scenes attributed to Major General John Brownrigg Ballasis (1806-90) attracted interest at a timed sale held this summer by 1818 Auctioneers (20% buyer’s premium) in Milnthorpe, Cumbria.

Featured in Previews, ATG No 2449, was an amusing illustration of the Vacuum Tube, a proposed new means of mass transport from the pages of the Glasgow Looking Glass, a publication that has come to be widely regarded as the world’s first comic.