British Heritage
Travel
The 1908 fire at Burley on the Hill broke out during a party attended by Winston Churchill, who commandeered a fireman’s helmet and helped fight it, and the Great Stair and library it spared go to auction at Savills on 24 November, guided at £3.25m
Southampton archaeologists towed ground-penetrating radar across Old Sarum, north of Salisbury, and mapped walls 3.5m thick, churches, houses, roads and cesspits, along with structures in the cathedral precinct that pre-date the medieval cathedral 
History Princess Elizabeth, aged about 10 at Praa Sands in Cornwall, covered a letter to Royal Lodge housemaid Beatrice Stillman with drawings of horses and highwaymen, and in February 2026 Hansons sold it for £25,000 against a £2,000 to £4,000 estimate
A one-page letter Princess Elizabeth wrote at Praa Sands, full of horses and highwaymen, made £25,000 at Hansons against a £2,000 to £4,000 guide price.
Royals
Five royal wedding rings, from the Queen Mother’s to Diana’s, were made from the same nugget of Welsh gold from the Clogau St David’s mine at Bontddu, and one gramme of it is still held by the Privy Purse Office
A vet’s verdict on the foal of her horse Dove left Elizabeth II furious, and in July 1960 she told her Crown Equerry “I’m allergic to vets and I can’t help it”; the letter is at Bonhams until 3 December 2026. The latest
HistoryIn 1905, Beatrix Potter used the royalties from Peter Rabbit and her first little books to buy a working farm in the Lake District village of Near Sawrey. Over the next 38 years, she bought and managed farms across the Lake District, and when she died she left 14 farms and more than 4,000 acres to the National TrustBeatrix Potter bought Hill Top in 1905, the year her fiancé died. Over 38 years she built up a Lake District estate of fell farms and Herdwick sheep, and left 14 farms and more than 4,000 acres to the National Trust.
HistoryIn 1999, David and Victoria Beckham paid £2.75 million for a Hertfordshire mansion the press nicknamed “Beckingham Palace.” They sold it in 2014 for a reported £11.3 million
HistoryIn 1938, Agatha Christie and her archaeologist husband bought Greenway, a house above the River Dart she had known since childhood, for £6,000. Today it holds more than 12,000 objects collected by five generations of her family, from Max’s excavated pottery to her own first editionsAgatha Christie paid £6,000 for Greenway in 1938, the same year she sold Ashfield, her childhood home. Much of Ashfield's china came with her, and it is still there among more than 12,000 objects.
HistoryOspreys were wiped out in Britain by 1916. In 1954, a single pair from Scandinavia nested at Loch Garten in the Scottish Highlands; more than 2 million people have since come to watch them, and over 350 pairs now breed in the UK
HistoryAhead of 300 new homes at Mancot in Flintshire, archaeologists found a 2,000-year-old Romano-British settlement overlooking Chester, with casting moulds and an unusually large group of brooches the inhabitants appear to have made on siteHeneb says excavation before 300 homes at Mancot, Flintshire, found a Romano-British settlement with casting moulds and brooches made on site.
HistoryRoughly 8,000 frog bones filled a single Roman ditch found on the A14 Cambridge to Huntingdon road scheme, and the damage on them points to birds of prey, most likely short-eared owls and hen harriersRoughly 8,000 frog bones from one ditch on the A14 Cambridge to Huntingdon scheme were eaten by birds of prey, most likely short-eared owls and hen harriers.