A COLLECTION of Lord Harlech’s belongings have sold for a whopping £2,600,000.

The multi-million pound catalogue included a rare motor car, a selections of exquisite paintings, antique furniture and a cache of private letters, including love letters to Jackie Kennedy.

The contents of Glyn Cywarch, the house where Lord Harlech lived, was sold at Bonhams auction house last week earning the rare accolade of ‘white glove’ status, where every single item listed is sold.

In total 531 pieces were sold under the hammer in a marathon 10-hour auction.

The sale total was £2,599,038 – more than two and a half times the pre-sale estimate.

The biggest ticket price was an important, newly-discovered portrait by Marcus Gheeraerts, court painter to Elizabeth I, that achieved £269,000 against an estimate of £60,000-80,000.

The portrait, painted in 1597, portrays Ellen Maurice, a prominent Welsh heiress and Harlech ancestor, whose pearls and jewellery are worth the equivalent of one million pounds in today’s market.

The Kennedy-Harlech Papers, heartfelt personal letters from Jackie Kennedy to David Ormsby Gore (the 5th Lord Harlech), Britain’s Ambassador in the USA during the Kennedy Presidency and the Cuban missile crisis sold for £100,000.

They reveal for the first time that Lord Harlech proposed marriage to Jackie Kennedy, why she turned him down and why, shortly afterwards, she married Aristotle Onassis.

The letters form part of a cache of 18 papers that have been locked away unseen in two despatch boxes at Glyn Cywarch, the Harlech family house, since Lord Harlech’s death in 1985, including personal correspondence from President Kennedy and from British Prime Ministers, Harold Macmillan, Sir Alec Douglas-Home and Harold Wilson.

Additionally, Irish artist Daniel Quigley’s portrait of The Godolphin Arabian, one of three Eastern stallions from which all modern racehorses descend, which made over five times its estimate, selling for £100,000.

The pick of the furniture was two “remarkable” buffet tables, which were over 400 year’s old, sold for over £140,000.

Another highlight was the 1936 Rapier 10Hp Tourer, a rare British sports car, one of only 300 built, that sold for £31,500, having been estimated at £20,000-25,000.

Read the full story in this week’s Meirionnydd edition of the Cambrian News