Cleaning up at a country-house sale

WHAT is it about a country-house sale that whips everyone into a frenzy of uncontrolled bidding? Is it the romance of faded grandeur or the desire of locals to carry off some memento of the big house ?

Around 10,000 people made the effort to get to the Wirral last week to view the contents of Thornton Manor, the house built by industrialist and philanthropist Lord Leverhulme. Visitors may have found precious little in the way of romantic decay - apart from Lord Leverhulme s alarmingly Spartan outdoor bedroom and bathtub for this neo-Jacobean house was unusually spruce (Lord L was, after all, the world s greatest manufacturer of household soap).

Even so, after just a day and a half, the crowds that filled the marquee to bursting point had broken the record for a UK country- house sale set last year when the contents of Benacre Hall in Suffolk realised 8.3 million. As the gavel finally came down on Thursday afternoon, the figure had almost doubled presale expectations to total 9.5 million.

As ever, the pieces and prices embraced everything from the sublime to the unbelievable. A rare James I walnut and inlaid chest dated 1604, despite extensive alterations, fetched the top price of 350,000, bought by a local collector, and even folding teak promenade chairs went for 10,800.

Americans scooped up pieces with romantic historical associations, like a massive colonial table in solid sissoo an Indian hardwood used by Napoleon III, which sold for an equally massive 322,500, and a Regency silver wine cooler presented to Charles Dickens, estimated at 3,000-5,000 and sold for 63,000.

A charming portrait of a young boy in Arcadian dress by Rembrandt s pupil, Nicholas Maes, also far exceeded expectations by selling to London dealers Hazlitt, Gooden and Fox on behalf of a client for 333,500, and the same firm also secured possibly the best buy of the sale at 104,700, Lord Leighton s succulent oil sketch for Flaming June, bought for stock.

Interestingly, the few casualties were for the most highly valued lots, more than 1 million of them, especially seat furniture, the overly enthusiastic estimates deterring potential buyers.

The good news, however, is that a George II walnut settee, at some stage inadvertently separated from a corresponding set of eight chairs, will be reunited with its peers in

the Lady Lever Art Gallery, which will also have the maquette for the Lord Leverhulme memorial by Sir William

Goscombe John. A substantial part of the Leverhulme works of art, it seems, will stay in the North-West.

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