Royals offload bric-a-brac in house clearance

LONDON - To a casual observer, it looks like the sort of bric-a-brac you might find at a garage sale.

The hundreds of gifts and trinkets being auctioned tomorrow for as little as £5 ($14.90) range from reproduction furniture and table lamps, to tennis rackets, pottery cats, and a dusty old video recorder.

But this will be no ordinary house clearance. For the cut-price items due to go under the hammer were once the contents of Nether Lypiatt Manor, Prince and Princess Michael of Kent's former country home.

The Kents, who are first cousins to the Queen, sold the eight-bedroom Gloucestershire pile and its contents for £5.75 million.

They now live at a taxpayer-funded apartment in Kensington Palace and, like other couples who decide to downsize, have been forced to sort through 25 years' worth of accumulated clutter.

Around a hundred lots of "residual items" will be sold to the highest bidder at the saleroom of Moore, Allen and Innocent in Cirencester.

The public will have the chance to buy anything from the Princess' Orbitrek exercise machine (estimate: £5-£10) to her son Lord Frederick Windsor's childhood table football set (£20-£40). An acoustic guitar "housed in a faux crocodile velvet-lined case" will go for an estimated £40-£60, while an unwanted portrait of Prince Michael by Evan Fotis is expected to fetch between £20 and £40.

Senior auctioneer Chris Surfleet said none of the lots was expected to realise more than £150.

The Kents have decided to save more valuable items from Nether Lypiatt for two specialist auctions in September and October.

"We're not expecting to sell this level of items for much, but we will have to find out," said Surfleet.

"With the specialist items we are expecting bidders to dig a little deeper. There's lots of history to these items so that won't do their chances any harm.

"A lot of curious people will come to look at the contents of a royal home."

The sale of unwanted personal gifts has embarrassed the royal family in the past, and friends of the Kents may raise an eyebrow at some items they chose to include in the sale.

A painting of the garden of Cockermouth Castle by their friend, the historian Paul Johnson, is expected to go for just £20-£30. It was inscribed by the artist with the message "to my favourite Princess".

- INDEPENDENT