Lost Derry photos sell for just over Â£1,000

1932... This old photograph from the glass plate collection shows the arch erected at Marlborough Terrace to mark that year's Eucharistic Congress.

The 68 plate glass negatives, salvaged from a house wrecked by a bomb during the Troubles, were estimated to fetch between £250-£300.

However, when they went under the hammer on Tuesday, the successful bidder ended up paying £1,020 for them - which includes the hammer price plus buyer’s premium.

The ‘Journal’ can reveal that, while many local people did get involved in the bidding and, indeed, are understood to have made all the early running, the glass plates were eventually purchased by a collector from the West Midlands in England.

A funeral cortege makes its way across Craigavon Bridge.

The negatives document life in Derry City and the NW and feature parades, dances, and sporting activities.

They are part of the ‘Derry Standard’ archive, a local newspaper that closed in 1966.

British soldiers discovered the images under the floorboards of a house in Derry’s Waterside in 1969.

Auctioneer Paul Cooper, of CJM Asset Management in England, described the collection as a “quite stunning record of the people and places and life in the city more than eighty years ago.”

The old ‘Derry Standard’ collection, covering the years 1927-47, is now held in Derry’s Central Library.