Cottingley Fairies fetch £2,600 at Louth auction rooms

The previous owner of the world-famous Cottingley Fairies photographs said he was “amazed” to see them sell for more than £2,500.

The pictures, taken by Frances Griffiths and Elsie Wright between 1917 and 1920, apparently depicted the cousins surrounded by magical creatures in a garden in Bradford.

Two of the five photos went under the hammer in Louth, Lincolnshire, on Tuesday after they were saved by David Whittaker, the son of Frances’s best friend Mary Anderson, who had given her a set when they were at school.

“I’m very pleased that there is now another custodian and they aren’t just sitting in a drawer in our house,” Mr Whittaker said.

Mr Whittaker said his mother had “spent her life believing in fairies” but wanted to throw them out when Elsie confessed in 1983 that they were fake and made out of paper cut-outs and hatpins.

The single lot, which sold for £2,600 within two minutes at John Taylors, included two photographs in original wallets, a photo of Mary and Frances on an outing in the early 1920s, and an archive of other material.

A spokesperson for the auction rooms said the outcome had “almost doubled pre-sale expectations” and had been snapped up by a collector based in London.

“The interest in it has been absolutely phenomenal,” they said.

The pictures became a worldwide sensation when Sherlock Holmes author Arthur Conan Doyle published them in 1920, believing them to be authentic.

They had been examined by experts and one of them was commissioned by Bradford’s Theosophical Society to produce a number of prints to be sold.

Frances passed a set to Mary, who “totally believed” they were genuine, said Mr Whittaker.

Mr Whittaker said: “My immediate reaction is I’m amazed someone would be prepared to pay so much.”

He said his mother would have been “very shocked that she had something so valuable”.

He added: “She would be in two minds as to whether in actual fact these kind of things should carry on when she was convinced in the end it was all a hoax.”

Despite that, Mr Whittaker said there were people who “still believe in these creatures of the spirit world” and he was sure they would “thoroughly enjoy looking at these pictures”.