Rare images go under the hammer

Posted on 27th February 2019

We had a collection of ephemera and goods consigned to us from a local house clearance which went under the hammer on Tuesday, 26^th February.

 Amongst the goods were a collection of memorabilia including stamps, postcards, comics, old newspapers including 1940’s Teesdale Mercury, and war ephemera.  New valuer Alexandra Harper who specialises in this field grouped the collection into seven lots, the highlight being a postcard album and two boxes of loose postcards depicting rare unseen images of Middleton-in-Teesdale taken by photographer D. Sinclair.

 In 1906, as the Edwardian craze for postcards gained momentum, David Sinclair opened a photographic business in Middleton-in-Teesdale, specialising in the publication of postcards depicting the locality. For the next ten years or so Mr Sinclair photographed the local scenery and the life of the people of Teesdale and its immediate surroundings. As a result, he created a unique historical record of life in a rural North Pennine community in the years immediately before the Great War.

 After fierce competition in the saleroom the lot, which showed images of High Cup Nick, The Old Washing Shop Eggleshope, Foggarthwaite, Lead Mine at Wire Gill to name but a few, eventually sold to a local bidder for £3,000 plus commission.