Last updated 16:04, Wednesday, 27 August 2008

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EARL OF SANDWICH: Lord Lonsdale’s pewter sandwich box is valued at £250-£350

A TREASURE trove of Whitehaven mining memorabilia and rare pocket watches made in the town will go under the hammer in a fine art auction next month.

The collection of thousands of items of historic Whitehaven interest came from one small terraced property in Whitehaven.

One item on offer will be the monogrammed pewter sandwich box used by Lord Lonsdale, (Hugh Cecil Lowther, the Yellow Earl) bearing the Lowther crest and Earl’s monogram, circa 1880.

The collection, built up over 25 years includes items from the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.

Other items include the Whitehaven Harbour Master’s car mascot; four miners’ lamps from the William, Wellington and Haig Pits; and a Whitehaven Harmonic Society medallion.

There are seven Wellington Pit Disaster memorial cloths (relating to the pit disaster in May 1910) and a collection of colliery tokens, harbour tokens, tea tokens, farthing tokens, pit lamp tokens, and cocoa and coffee-house tokens.

Twenty rare pocket watches by various 19th century Whitehaven makers, including William Muncaster, John Spittle, W.H. Telford and Robert Sutton, are also on sale and there are hundreds of earthenware and glass spirit, ale and other bottles from Whitehaven breweries.

Issues of The Whitehaven News, Whitehaven Gazette and Cumberland Pacquet dating from Victorian and Edwardian times are among the lots,

Earthenware ginger beer bottles from J. Cartmell & Co. Whitehaven and Kearney & Sons are valued at £20; a George III bell from Irton Hall is estimated at £250-350; and there are two enamelled advertising plaques for Donaldsons’ butchers Market Place and Elliotts’ hairdressers Tangier Street.

The bronze bell dates from the days when Whitehaven shipowner Daniel Brocklebank lived at Irton Hall, and was cast the same year as the Mutiny on the Bounty.

The seller wishes to remain anonymous but he said he had been buying items at auctions and on the internet site eBay. “But it became something of an obsession and I have decided it is time to sell my collection.”

The sale will be held in conjunction with Mitchells Fine Art Sale on September 11 and 12 at the Furniture Hall, 47 Station Road, Cockermouth, Cumbria, CA13 9PZ.

Viewing for this sale will take place the Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday prior.

The sale comprises in total some 1,300 lots, many others of which have local interest.

There are long-case clocks by local makers, and paintings by noted local artists such as Edward Horace Thompson, Len Roope, Edward Lyon and Albert Rosser.

For more information contact Mark Wise or James Moore on 01900 827800.