Rare antique golf clubs go under the hammer

The clubs were all designed by Major Gilbert Legh,whose great great nephew, Lord Newton,57, lives at Laughton Park Farm, Laughton,and who was a Wealden district councillor for 12 years,from 1987 to 1999.

Lord Newton - who no longer plays golf after losing too much money the last time he played - said: 'Although he was my great great uncle, I know very little about him as he died in 1939 before I was born and I wasn't aware that these clubs are coming up for sale.'

Major Legh (1858-1939) was the younger son of the first Lord Newton - a wealthy Cheshire landowner and Conservative MP - who was given an hereditary peerage in 1892 after 26 years in Parliament.

After fighting with distinction in Africa - in Sudan and then in the Boer War - his younger son,Gilbert,retired to Norfolk,where ,among other things, he designed golf clubs when organised golf was then in its infancy.

Now four of these antique Legh clubs - all with old fashioned hickory shafts - are coming up for sale at a two day auction, beginning on Thursday,September 27,at Sotheby's in New York.

The Legh clubs are among 600 antique golf clubs quietly and patiently assembled over a lifetime by an American enthusiast named Jeffery B.

Ellis and which are expected to fetch more than 1million pounds at the two day Sotheby's' auction.

Mr Ellis explained why he is selling: 'I got to the point where I had had done what I had set out to do.The collection was so big I couldn't enjoy it because it was packed away in a vault.'

Sir Piers Legh - Gilbert Legh's nephew and great-uncle of the Laughton-based Lord Newton - became Master of the Household to King George VI; and then Sir Francis Legh - Gilbert Legh's great nephew and uncle of the Laughton-based Lord Newton - became,at different times, private secretary to the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret.

It was while being escorted by Sir Piers Legh from the Regency Room at Buckingham Palace that Group Captain Peter Townsend first set eyes on the young Princess Margaret and that was the beginning of a doomed royal romance,which would intrigue much of the nation.