A SELECTION of rare antiques from the collections of Castle Howard have sold for a combined total of £12.7m at auction.

The works, which were estimated to fetch between £7.4m and £10.8m when they went under the hammer at Sotheby's in London, on Wednesday, spanned a range of periods and media, from Roman antiquities to Old Master paintings and 17th-century Italian furniture.

Highlights included a portrait of King Henry VIII, from the studio of Hans Holbein, which achieved £965,000, a monumental vase made for the palace of the Roman Emperor Nero, which sold for £1.1m.

Ferdinand Bol’s Portrait of a Boy, 1652 also sold for £5.2m, a new record for the artist.

Henry Wyndham, chairman at Sotheby's Europe, said: "The collections at Castle Howard chart two millennia of history and 300 years of collecting and rank among the finest private art collections in the world."

The Howard family has said the sales will go towards securing the future of the stately home.

Last year Nicholas Howard moved to Castle Howard with his wife Victoria Barnsley.

The couple took over the day-to-day running of the estate from younger brother of Simon, who had managed the estate for 30 years and lived at the house with his wife Rebecca and 13-year-old twins.

Nicholas Howard said: "Over the centuries, our family has had the extraordinary good fortune to be the custodians of many great treasures. We very much hope that those that were sold today will bring as much joy to their new owners as they have to us and to our ancestors.

"Their sale will help us to secure the future of Castle Howard as it moves into its fourth century.”