A policeman’s lot... force’s vintage artefacts going under the hammer
AUCTION STATIONS: MEMORABILIA SET TO SELL FOR £25,000
A COLLECTION of police memorabilia and artefacts, some dating back to the Victorian era, is expected to sell for up to £25,000 at an auction in North Yorkshire tomorrow.
Called Militaria and Ethnographica, the sale will be held at Tennants auctioneers at Leyburn in North Yorkshire.
The catalogue includes an extensive collection of police helmet plates, badges, belts, handcuffs, and helmets dating from the Victorian era and the first half of the 20th century.
A Tennants spokesman said: “The collection, which is being sold in 130 lots, is expected to sell for a combined hammer price of £15,000 to £25,000.
“Highlights of the collection included a rare Victorian officer’s helmet plate of Grantham Borough Police, the force having been established in 1836, a rare Greenock Police black leather belt and a Lincolnshire Constabulary woman’s helmet.”
Other items to be sold include a collection of powder horns and flasks. Unusual examples in the collection include a 19th century South African powder horn, of polished cow horn with scrimshaw decoration depicting the Battle of Blood River with Boer trackers and Zulu warriors.
Exhibited at Houldsworth Hall, Manchester in 1953, the powder horn was once the property of the pawn-brokering Gilberts family of Manchester, three generations of which collected powder horns and flasks.
Of aviation interest are a group of early aeroplane propellers and part-propellers, many of which were used to illustrate books on the subject which are also included in the sale.
Interesting lots include an early 20th century halfpropeller blade for a Sopwith Scout by Morris & Company Ltd. Also of note is an observer’s and air gunner’s flying log book.
The book belonged to Flight Officer Donald Rawnsley, an RAF Air Gunner who flew from Northolt to Gibraltar in May 1944 with Lieutenant Clifton James of the Royal Army Pay Corps, who was on a mission to mislead the Germans.
Lieutenant James was Montgomery’s double with the exception of a missing finger, for which a prosthetic was made, who was sent to deceive Hitler’s high command that the Field Marshall was in the Mediterranean, away from his invasion base, thus confusing the Germans who were taken by complete surprise by the D-Day invasion.