A LETTER written by Stan Laurel to the wife of one of his boyhood friends in Tynemouth has gone under the hammer for £1,400.

The note, sent from the comedy legend’s home in Santa Monica, California in 1960, had only been expected to make between £300 and £500 when it came up for auction at Anderson & Garland’s Fine Art and Antiques Sale in Newcastle.

But a frenzy of online bidding almost trebled the top estimate for the letter, which came complete with its original airmail envelope, and it was sold to a buyer in Darlington who has asked to remain anonymous.

The note was sold by Margaret Miller, from Hexham. It was in reply to a letter written to Laurel by her mother, also called Margaret. He wrote back thanking her for a calendar and card she had sent showing a scene from Tynemouth, to where he had travelled on the train to school every day with her husband Arthur in the 1890s.

Another North-East also attracted huge interest among bidders and sold for more than 20 times its pre-auction estimate.

The Victorian artwork, showing ‘the human skull throughout the ages’, was painted on a panel by Darlington artist W Hall.

It had been part of a display in the classrooms at the former Longhirst Hall School in Northumberland for young people with criminal convictions, which closed in 1982.

The panel had been expected to sell for between £50 and £100 but was eventually won by a collector who loved the unique nature of the piece and paid an amazing £2,100 for it.

The letter and painted panel were among an array of unusual collectibles sold at the two-day auction.

The highest priced item over the two days was a chalk and pastel scene by much loved North East Pitman Painter Norman Cornish, who died earlier this year at the age of 94. The Pit Road sold for £8,200.