Royal stockings sold for £8,000

Queen Victoria is believed to have worn the stockings in the 1870s

A pair of Queen Victoria's stockings have been sold at auction in Derby for 40 times the list price.

The black and white stockings, owned by a Derbyshire woman who inherited them from her mother, were sold for £8,000 to a bidder from North Wales.

A pair of Queen Victoria's 50-inch bloomers fetched £4,500 at the same auction house in July.

The stockings were purchased for the Ruddington Framework Knitters' Museum in Nottingham.

Canadian bids

The buyer was David Alcock, whose father-in-law Jack Smirfitt was a curator at the museum.

Former owner Mary Youings, of Ripley, Derbyshire, said she had kept the stockings boxed-up in her loft.

Quite how the stockings came to rest in my family in the early years of the last century we do not know Mary Youings, former owner

Mr Alcock, a 52-year-old mechanic, saw off bids from as far away as Canada for the stockings.

He said: "I am over the moon. I was wary that they may go for such a high price but we were fairly determined.

"We were fortunate enough to get them and the family will be really pleased."

The auction was held at a hotel near Derby by auctioneer Charles Hanson, who also sold the royal bloomers.

The stockings will be displayed in a Nottingham museum

The pair of stockings were listed for between £150 and £200, but there was "a lot of interest" in the item, an auction house spokesman said.

Mrs Youings, 82, a former teacher, said: "Quite how the stockings came to rest in my family in the early years of the last century we do not know.

"But it is likely they came from the Marr or Harland family in North Yorkshire and were given to my mother in around 1910."

The auction house believes the quality of the hand stitching, the black and white two-tone silk finish and the fact they include the Royal Crest is evidence that they were worn by the queen in the 1870s.