Snowdon has a grand clear-out

Lord Snowdon is having a clearout. After selling his country cottage, he has decided everything else must go.

For most people that would mean a garage sale of old plastic toys, unwanted books and a threadbare sofa. But for Lord Snowdon it requires an auction at Sotheby's with a 50-page colour catalogue detailing Victorian furniture, antique toys and 18th-century baby clothes.

Among the items are boxes of kitchen paraphernalia, old glasses, knick-knacks and even an old Paisley shawl.

He may not have thrown in the kitchen sink as well, but the kitchen stove is certainly there - an old, wrought- iron affair expected to fetch as much as £4,000.

Like any homeowner forced to part with a lifetime's collection of trinkets - even though this lot is estimated to fetch a total of £200,000 - Lord Snowdon admitted it would be a wrench selling them off.

"I won't go anywhere near the auction," he said. "It would be far too sad. All those things evoke a legion of memories and I'm attached to all of them."

Lord Snowdon recently sold Old House, on the Nymans estate near Handcross, West Sussex, where he spent much of his childhood. An inveterate collector, he says there is no room for its contents in his Kensington home, so they too must go.

When his grandparents, Colonel and Mrs Messel, gave the Nymans estate to the National Trust in the Fifties, Lord Snowdon retained the lease of Old House and spent several years restoring it.

During the Sixties, when Lord Snowdon, at the time married to Princess Margaret, was a fashionable photographer with a keen interest in design, he gave the cottage a contemporary look. "This was a period of minimalism, Arne Jacobsen chairs, brick floors and everything just whitewashed. I was always changing the inside - it has never been finished."

After his divorce from Princess Margaret and his subsequent marriage to Lucy Lindsay-Hogg, the look of Old House changed. " Having got over the Sixties influence, when the whole place was filled with paper Japanese lampshades, the place sobered up, thanks to Lucy, who made it much more cosy and liveable in."

But throughout changing fashions, Lord Snowdon, 72, kept the furniture, memorabilia, antiques and bric-a-brac that had surrounded his childhood days.

All this will now go under the hammer. The items to be sold at the end of the month include four beautifully embroidered 18th-century baby caps, in his mother's collection for generations and expected to fetch as much as £4,000; his old Jacques croquet set (£350); a George II desk (£12,000); a James I armchair (£5,000), and a Charles I oak tester bed (£12,000).

Among the most unusual items is a French automaton in the form of a walking pig, which may go for up to £600. "Heaven knows how I got that," said Lord Snowdon. "It might have been a childhood toy. I seem to remember it was made of pig skin and it walks on wheels."

Also on sale is one of the few paintings by Lord Snowdon, Still Life With Lemons, modestly estimated at £150-£250. He said: "It's just an ordinary still life, but I painted so badly it was better that I stuck to taking pictures."

In the foreword to the Sotheby's catalogue, Lord Snowdon writes: "I have loved Old House as long as I can remember. . . it will be with the utmost sadness that I leave but at least I will have many happy memories." And they're not for sale.