Collectors take a pew – and raise £1,200 for church
ANTIQUES collectors in the Cotswolds were invited to take a pew last week – and raised £1,220 for the Cirencester Parish Church restoration fund.
Eight Victorian oak pews from Cirencester parish church commanded an average hammer price of £150 each when they were sold by auction at Moore Allen & Innocent's fortnightly antiques sale in Cirencester.
The pews were made for a major restoration of St John Baptist church in 1865. They were removed during the most recent renovation – a £2 million overhaul which started in 2008.
The building works that look place in the 1860s were overseen by the renowned architect Sir George Gilbert Scott, and the pews were decorated in the gothic revival taste so beloved of many Victorians, the architect included.
And it wasn't the first time the auctioneers had sold surplus Victorian artefacts from the church. In 2008 nearly 1,000 Victorian floor tiles were removed and sold by the auctioneers, raising £4,410 for the restoration project.
Although collectively the pews broke the magic £1,000 barrier, the top lot price of the day was achieved by a pictures with a mining theme.
Calverton Colliery, painted and signed in its 1980 heyday by the miner-turned-artist Ron Gribbons, was accompanied by five similar studies by the same hand and two further colliery pictures.
Bidders dug deep and the painting of the Nottinghamshire colliery – the first shaft of which was sunk in 1932 and by 1982 employed 1,500 miners – was bought for £560.
Another mined commodity achieved the second highest lot price when a pair of silver George V pierced silver boat shaped bonbon dishes – crafted in Edinburgh in 1910 – sold for £480, the hammer price bolstered by the growing market demand for silver.
And of particular local interest was a set of medals awarded to a Private JE Lamb of the Gloucestershire Yeomanry, including a Victory Medal and a Great British War Medal from the First World War.
The medals were sold with six World War Two medals awarded to W.T. Lamb of Tetbury, including the 1939-45 Medal, Defence Medal, Africa Star, 1939-45 Star, Italy Star and a Militia for Efficient Service Medal.
The medals came in a tin trunk bearing the label H Poole & Co Army & Navy Tailors, 32 Saville Row, containing photographs, ephemera and papers relating to both Lambs. The winning bidder paid £310 for the collection.
The next antiques sales at Moore Allen & Innocent are a single owner toy sale on September 29 – when almost the entire collection of the former Park House Toy Museum in Stow-on-the-wold will go under the hammer – followed by the auction of the crème de la crème of antiques at the Selected Sale the following day.
For auction catalogues, log on to www.mooreallen.co.uk
Please note that the correct name of Cirencester parish church is 'St John Baptist' and not 'St John the Baptist'. This is not an omission!
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| One of the pews from Cirencester parish church |