HUNDREDS of fine antiques, furniture and paintings from a Forest of Dean country house are to be auctioned this week.

The interiors auction is the first of seven sales of the contents of Pen Moel at Woodcroft near Chepstow that will take place this year.

Auctioneers Dreweatts estimate this first sale could realise between £220,000 and £345,000.

The 512 lots are due to go under the hammer at Dreweatts’ sale room Donnington Priory, Newbury in Berkshire tomorrow (Thursday).

The auctioneers say the sale will be led by a pair of ‘impressively carved’ 17th century hardwood columns standing at 74 inches (168cm) tall and valued between £800 and £1,200.

The item with the highest estimate is a giltwood wall mirror dating to about 1720 in the reign of King George I which the auctioneers think will fetch between £3,000 and £5,000.

Other items in the sale range from Roman pottery and 2,300-year-old figures from Ancient Egypt to a 2002 painting by artist Shezad Dawood.

Items of local interest include 1980s paintings of Wintour’s Leap, which is near Pen Moel, Chepstow Castle, and the Severn Bridge by artist Hugh Melvill Crowther.

Another lot combines a hand-coloured engraving of Chepstow Castle and a hand-coloured map of Gloucestershire, both dating from the 18th century.

A spokesman for Dreweatts said: “The sale of property from Pen Moel provides an excellent opportunity for collectors to acquire works of art that have remained in private hands for many decades.

“During the valuation some wonderful treasures came to light from Georgian furniture to Japanese bronzes and Dutch Old Master paintings to Nepalese silver.

“The interiors auction features a wonderful array of objects from the domestic to the extraordinary.”

A sale of paintings scheduled for Wednesday, July 13 will include Portrait of Lady Reclining by 18th century German painting Anton Raphael Mengs which is expected to fetch between £20,000 and £30,000.

A work attributed to 17th century pioneer of Italianate landscape in Holland, Jan Both will also be up for sale.

The ‘important’ picture featuring Diana and Actaeon from Roman mythology is estimated at between £12,000 and £18,000.

Among the ‘discoveries’ at Pen Moel is a French clock made around 1810 by the celebrated maker Henry Lapaute.

It will feature in the clocks, barometers and scientific instruments sale on Tuesday, September 20 and is valued between £25,000 and £35,000.

A Japanese bronze vase standing at more than six feet high and estimated between £6,000 and £8,000 will be sold in the Chinese and Japanese ceramic sale in November.

A set of four pictures by Indian artists made for the British in India is expected to fetch up to £8,000 at the Asian works of art sale on Tuesday, November 8.

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PEN Moel was bought by surgeon Sir Holburt Waring in the 1930s and has been in his family ever since.

The name of the house, which is one of the most substantial in parish of Tidenham, means Bare Top in Welsh and it is also has an anglicised version, Penmoyle, which makes the pronunciation more obvious to English speakers.

The house at Woodcroft, which was bought by Sir Holburt in 1935, was previously the home of the Phipps sisters who were renowned philanthropists and lived at Pen Moel throughout the 19th century.

Sir Holbert was a surgeon at St Bartholomew’s Hospital in London, the president of the Royal College Surgeons between 1932 and 1935 and the vice-chancellor of the University of London between 1922 and 1924.

He went to India in 1911 to operate on a son of the hereditary Prime Minister of Nepal and among the items on sale at an auction in November will be a set of nine gouache paintings of a Hindu festival.

Sir Holburt died at home in 1953 at the age of 87.