Will Fisher sale at Christie's totals £4m mainly on fireplaces

Georgian style marble fireplace tablet sold for £49,250 (est £2,000 - £4,000) [photo Christie's

London South West, UK - Official totals are not yet out for the single owner 477 lot sale of Will Fisher of Jamb at Christie's South Kensington on Thursday but we calculate that it made over £4m, a spectacular result which b...

Bill Bryson's testimonial about Mongers Architectural Salvage

Bill Bryson on Mongers: delightful and rewarding [photo © Salvo

Norfolk, UK - Bill Bryson OBE, writer, commissioner for English Heritage and president of the Campaign to Protect Rural England, has written Mongers of Hingham a corkingly elegant testimonial. Owner Sam Coster desc...

Webb Lamp Co Ltd Victorian sewer gas lampost listed by EH

Webb Sewer Gas Destructor lampost [photo Street View

Tyne and Wear, UK - English Heritage has listed an iron sewer gas lampost cast by 'Webb Lamp Co Ltd Birmingham' and marked 'J E Webb Patent Sewer Gas Destructor' located in Park Road, Monkseaton, Whitley Bay. The lam...

Frank Buckley's '€1.4bn' shredded euros house ~ nearer €60m?

Inside the euro home [photo © Melvin Brennan

Co Dublin, Ireland (Rep.) - Frank Buckley is an artist who bought a €360,000 house on a 100 per cent mortgage just before the market crashed leaving it worth around €220,000 and Frank with an insoluble problem. By way of com...

SWMPs could be scrapped as part of the UK red tape challenge

Hertfordshire, UK - Last September the government invited comments on environmental legislation as part of its Red Tape Challenge which aimed to reduce regulation and so promote growth and jobs. Retailers had already ...

BioRegional and social enterprise at the World Economic Forum

BioRegional is based at Bedzed [photo Salvo

Switzerland - Sue Riddlestone and Pooran Desai, founders of BioRegional Development Group which was the Schwab Social Entrepreneur of the Year Europe 2011, were invited to the World Economic Forum in Davos this wee...

On Thieves and Thieving - part one

Monica and Marjory two Yapton Metal Co guard dogs from the 1970s [photo PHJ

West Sussex, UK - I was burgled three times last year: twice at the yard and once at my house. The house was a nasty little shock - an Englishman's home and all that! Some years ago another thief had once entered the c...

EH advice to sell old statuary and replace with replica slammed

The Pantheon at Ince Blundell Hall [Mansions of England by J Neale

Merseyside, UK - Last week, the culture minister John Penrose said that the listed building consent for the removal, repairs and replacement of 102 pieces of antique marble sculpture located in a garden temple and Pan...

Taylor Wimpey demolishes 24 brand new homes

Mounds of rubble [photo This is Gloucestershire

Gloucestershire, UK - Residents of Noverton, Prestbury, were celebrating in December after Taylor Wimpey was forced to demolish twenty-four homes it had just built because the land had a covenant preventing its use for dev...

Fry's cabinet makes £2,000 at Gaze's bygones sale

Norfolk, UK - Top lot at the rural and domestic bygones sale at Gaze's in Diss was an Edwardian mahogany Fry's chocolate display cabinet with glass pediment, Bristol makers plaque and an etched glass front panel, 4...