Scotland’s oldest sick note sold for £5,000

A 450-year-old letter written by Mary Queen of Scots has sold at auction for £5,000.The letter, which was unearthed at Blair Castle, Ayrshire, is said to have been written to the then Laird of Blair, relieving him of his duties at court due to gout.

Dated 14 March 1554, it doubled its valuation in the sale and was one of more than 1,000 items from Blair Castle which went under the hammer at Lyon & Turnbull auctioneers in Edinburgh.

The entire Blair lot raised about £1.2 million, more than double the auctioneers’ estimate of £500,000.

Gavin Strang, director of Lyon & Turnbull, said: “There has been great interest in the Blair lots auctioned over the last two days, and there was particular excitement over the letter today.

“There was lots of bidding for the lot and it eventually went to a private collector for £5,000, more than double our estimate.”

The most expensive single piece in the sale turned out to be a painting by James Howe, named The Last Of The Leith Races.

The painting sold for £36,000 from an original estimate of £15,000. It depicts horseracing in Leith in the early 1800s before the event moved to Musselburgh racecourse.

Blair Castle is said to be the oldest continually inhabited mansion in Scotland and the home of the Barony of Blair, where the current family can trace its ancestry back to William the Lion (1165).

Some of the other items up for sale included a Zeigler carpet, which sold for £28,000, and an 19th-century Italian marble table, which fetched £13,000.