An historic door which reputedly came from Leicester Prison, is among the unusual items set to go under the hammer this week, following the closure of two of Britain’s most eccentric shops.
The door is due to put under auction tomorrow (Wednesday, April 26), after TMB Vape Lab Ltd shut up two of its shops. It was one of many items, which was used to ‘decorate’ the premises of the stores, which had premises at Sutton-in-Ashfield and Mansfield in Nottinghamshire.
Other eccentric items from the stores going under the hammer tomorrow, include a giant demolition wrecking ball, on which supermodel Naomi Campbell once perched in an iconic car safety campaign, and a yellow miniature submarine.
The firm ceased trading last month and the liquidators handling the winding up of the business have now instructed auctioneers Eddisons to dispose of the contents of the two shops: fixtures, fittings, vape stocks – and the hoard of treasures.
“We were warned there was some unusual stuff heading our way but we were just amazed by what came out of the fleet of delivery vehicles that arrived at our auction centre in North Lincolnshire,” said Eddisons director Paul Cooper.
“The vintage prison door is reputed to have come from Leicester, which is widely viewed as one of the most impressive jails in the country. It was opened in 1828 and built in a castle style, with 30-foot perimeter walls, apparently the highest in the country. The prison has been enlarged and changed numerous times over the past two centuries and historically it was not unusual for items to be sold off or salvaged when such work was being done – so it could well be from there.”
Paul added: “Other unlikely things that came out of the two vape shops include church windows, life-size model carol singers, items of fairground memorabilia, a Halloween skeleton, ancient stable doors, antique cash registers and even some of the lights that once illuminated sets in Carlton Television’s Nottingham studios – not to mention a 1980 Honda motorcycle that arrived as a pile of bits on a pallet. I could go on.”
“I gather the idea was to give the shops a quirky edge and – magically – the collection just kept on growing. A director of the company told one of my colleagues ‘We didn’t go looking for it – it came to us’.”
A hundred and twenty eight lots are going under the hammer in the online auction that ends at 1 o’clock on Wednesday afternoon (26th April). The full auction catalogue is available at https://www.eddisons.com/
