Canterbury

CANTERBURY Auction Galleries are celebrating the relaunch of their rooms after a £300,000 modernisation programme. The Lord Mayor of Canterbury, Councillor Fred Whitemore, will re-open the rooms on October 4, revealing, among other changes, a grand new slate staircase and entrance lobby, with new reception area.

Furniture in country house is eclipsed by piece found in a drawer UK: PAPERWEIGHTS have not hit any sort of headlines in years and anyone outside the coterie of (mostly American) collectors may have assumed they had been relegated to the status of murder weapons in Thirties whodunits – but not so. One became the totally unexpected star of the contents of The Thorne, a country house at Bethsersden which were removed to the salerooms at Canterbury.

UK: International bidders tuned into proceedings at Canterbury Auction Galleries on October 2, 1999 in the prospect of acquiring one of the earliest ship-to-shore receivers, illustrated right, manufactured in 1908 by the founding father of commercial radio communication – Guglielmo Marconi.