A complete collection of the enigmatic Cottingley Fairies photographs, including the elusive fifth image, has sold for £3,100 at an auction in Lincolnshire.
The collection was brought to auction by a farming family from Devon who recognized the rarity of their memorabilia after seeing similar items featured on the television program 'Antiques Roadshow'. The auction, held at John Taylors in Louth, saw a competitive bidding war, with online participants being particularly active. The successful bidder, from Rossendale, Lancashire, expressed deep emotion upon acquiring the historically significant images.
The Cottingley Fairies photographs have captivated the public for over a century, maintaining their mystique despite the eventual confession of a hoax by the young photographers, Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths. The cousins, aged 16 and 9 in 1917 when the first photographs were taken near a stream in Cottingley, West Yorkshire, created the images using cardboard cutouts of fairies enhanced with wings.
The story gained widespread attention when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes and a proponent of spiritualism, published the photographs in The Strand Magazine in December 1920, believing them to be authentic evidence of fairies. Doyle's conviction, coupled with the public's post-World War I desire for solace and the supernatural, fueled the phenomenon. While the initial photographs were taken in 1917, with three more following in 1920, the debate surrounding their authenticity continued for decades. Elsie and Frances eventually admitted to the hoax in the early 1980s, though Frances maintained that the fifth photograph, known as 'Fairies and their Sunbath,' was genuine.
This recent sale highlights the enduring fascination with the Cottingley Fairies. In a previous auction in October 2018, two of the original photographs from 1917 sold for significantly higher prices than estimated: 'Iris and the Gnome' fetched £5,400, and 'Alice and the Fairies' achieved £15,000, demonstrating the strong market for these historically significant images.