Auctions in both Devizes and Chippenham caused a stir at the weekend.

In Devizes the Golden Globe award presented to Peter Sellers for his performance in the 1979 film Being There sold for £8,000 at Aldridges in Devizes on Saturday.

The award, made to British film actor Sellers in 1980, six months before his fatal heart attack, had been estimated to fetch between £5,000 and £8,000.

Auctioneer Andrew Aldridge said: “Thanks to the international publicity we had for the sale, we had bidders from all over the world.

“It came down to a tussle between bidders in Hong Kong and Hollywood. Hong Kong won.”

The Golden Globe awards are presented by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and this was the only one Sellers won in his career.

The history of the trophy has an intriguing side to it. Sellers’ entire estate went to his estranged third wife, Lynne Frederick. Frederick’s mother helped her organise the disposal of the estate. On return to this country, her mother was staying with friends in Liverpool.

On the way back to the airport, Mrs Frederick presented a little package to her friend as a thank you for her hospitality. Inside the package was the Golden Globe.

A document, thought to be the last item to be signed by Sellers before his death, setting up a trust fund for his daughter Victoria, failed to reach its reserve and was withdrawn from sale. It had been estimated at between £1,000 to £1,500.

But a copy of Sellers’ last full employment agreement for Being There, The Prisoner of Zenda and The Fiendish Plot of Fu Manchu, sold for just over £600.

Sellers had completed filming on Fu Manchu but died a month before it was released.

Other items on sale included a small clockwork railway locomotive dating from around 1920 and most charitably described as distressed.

It fetched £300, while an early 18th- century settee, rescued from an outbuilding of a local property, surprised many by selling for £1,000.

A 14th-century book, the size of an average human hand, made a phenomenal £15,000 at The Chippenham Auction Rooms on Saturday.

The item was described in the catalogue as a rare and very early Roman Catholic missal, a hand illuminated manuscript on vellum in Latin, set within a 19th- century leather binding, bound by Birdsalls Northampton.

Principal auctioneer Richard Edmonds said: “It was a fantastic price. I am sad that I was not on the rostrum to sell it as it was Gordon Borckmen’s turn up there and he did very well.

“We knew after doing some research that it was a special item.”

The book went to a private bidder on the phone.