A FIRST edition, first impression of J.K. Rowling’s ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’ has sold for more than £80,000 at Tennants Auctioneers, Leyburn.

It was one of a number of outstanding results seen in the auction house's Books, Maps and Manuscripts Sale on July 28.

Harriet Hunter Smart from Tennats said: "A sought-after volume in exceptional condition, the book was one of 500 case-bound copies printed in the first run, and it demonstrated all the requisite points of identification.

"Of the 500 copies of the preferred case-bound issue, 300 were sent to libraries and experienced a high rate of loss and damage. "This present copy was bought by the vendors in 1997, the year of release, from Dillons in Nottingham, the premises remembered under its original trading name of Sisson and Parker.

"A highly important collection of C. S. Lewis titles from the library of the author’s lifelong friend Cecil Harwood (1898-1975), sold in seven lots, achieved a total hammer price of £39,000.

"Cecil Harwood attended Highgate School with philosopher and poet Owen Barfield and won a classical scholarship to Christ Church, Oxford.

"Here he met Lewis at Oxford shortly after his arrival and the pair remained lifelong friends. Harwood and Barfield’s spiritual opinions and their embrace of the anthroposophy movement were a strong influence on Lewis’s own religious development. The top lot of the collection, selling for £9,500, was C. S. Lewis’s personal annotated copy of Snorri Sturlason’s Heimskringla (Cambridge, 1932), a hugely evocative literary artefact shedding light on his mature engagement with the Norse sagas which had first stimulated his ‘imaginative Renaissance’ as a young schoolboy."

Early manuscripts in the sale garnered high levels of interest. An extensive and early manuscript receipt book dated circa 1678-1692 by Ann Broke, daughter of Sir Robert Broke, 1st Baronet of Nacton, Suffolk sold for £19,000. Packed with recipes all listed in the index under headings such as ‘Boyled Meats’, ‘Chesecaks & Cheese’, and ‘Purfumes, Pomatums & cleening for hands Face and Teeth’, the volume was one of twenty lots of books and manuscripts in the sale from the Turnor library at Stoke Rochford, Lincolnshire. From the same library came a manuscript estate-book of Thomas Cony of Bassingthorpe, Lincolnshire circa 1564-1608 that sold well above estimate at £11,000, and a Bible published by John Field, Cambridge in 1660 that sold for £16,000.

The sale achieved a total hammer price of £259,620 with a 99 per cent sold rate for 209 lots.

A fine late 18th century cello made by Benjamin Banks of Salisbury in 1786, is to be sold with an estimate of £50,000 to 70,000 in Tennants' Scientific and Musical Instruments Sale on September 29.

Ms Hunter Smart said: "Benjamin Banks, known as the ‘English Amati’, was one of the finest English instrument makers of his age with his cellos being particularly sought-after.

"Banks was born in Salisbury in 1727 and began his career in instrument making as an apprentice to his uncle William Hutoft in his workshop on Catherine Street, which Banks would later inherit. Whilst there are no records of the type of instruments produced in Hutoft’s workshop, the earliest instruments known by Banks were keyboard instruments and a guitar or cittern. It appears that he only began making violins, cellos, and violas, which he would later specialise in, circa 1775."

"Unusually, for such a fine craftsman of the era, Banks remained based in Salisbury for the rest of his life rather than moving to London. However, he likely had close links with the city, and certainly sold instruments through dealers there. His finest instruments were based on the Amati and Stainer design, similar to those of other top London makers of the period, which suggests that he perhaps worked in London for a spell. Banks died in 1795, leaving three sons who all shared his profession.

The cello bears the original maker’s label, which is adhered to the inside of the back pieces and is visible through the sound holes. The label is printed with a decorative scrolling border and ‘Benjamin Banks,/Salisbury, Fecit 17’ with the last two digits of the date ’86’ written in by hand. The label and handwriting of the last two digits of the date are typical of other known examples by the maker.

The instrument was sold by L.P. Balmforth & Son of Leeds to a gentleman in the Northeast of England for £165 in 1965, with paperwork certifying its authenticity issued by William E. Hill & Sons of New Bond Street, London in 1938. William E. Hill & Sons, now trading as W.E. Hill & Sons, make fine violins and bows and the company can trace its history back to a ‘Mr Hill, ye instrument maker’ to whom Samuel Pepys paid a visit in February 1660. Copies of the paperwork from L.P. Balmforth & Son and William E. Hill & Sons will be sold with the cello.

Balmforth’s described the cello at the time of its purchase in the 1960s as ‘a well made instrument with a nice round tone. Red, brown varnish, very good condition. Although it is fairly old and has been well played, we would not call it fragile’. William E. Hill & Sons said, ‘The back, in two pieces, is marked by a very small, faint curl, that of the sides being similar, the head plain and the varnish of a very dark brown colour’. A catalogue is at www.tennants.co.uk leading up to the sale, and remote bidding is available.