Alan Carr is set to keep the only item left unsold from the auction of unwanted contents from Ayton Castle in the Scottish Borders: a concrete cow sculpture. Hundreds of other pieces from the castle changed hands on Sunday, but the cow drew no bid and will stay with the man who bought the property.
The auction followed viewings on Friday and Saturday and took place at Ayton Castle itself, where furniture, paintings and textiles were offered alongside the oddities that had been left behind. Jim Railton, who oversaw the sale, called it a “very busy day” and said the auction ran for seven-and-a-half hours, ending with just one unsold lot. That was the cow.
Railton said the sculpture was part of a wider collection of pieces known as the Branxton Cement Menagerie, which had been relocated to Ayton Castle in 2021. The rest of that group found buyers, bringing in about £28,000, while the top price of the day was £24,000 for a five-seater Bentley Mulsanne. By the end, the sale had cleared hundreds of residual items from the castle in a single day.
The one item that failed to move carried its own backstory. Railton said: “For some reason we couldn't get a bid for it,” before adding that Carr, who has bought the castle, is going to keep it as “an ornament or a memory” of the animals that were at Branxton and then went to Ayton. That leaves the comic-looking sculpture not as a leftover, but as a keepsake from a sale that emptied most of the castle in one sweep.
The auction also folded in unwanted items from both Carr and the former owners, which explains why the sale ranged from practical furnishings to a concrete farmyard sculpture. The Branxton Cement Menagerie had already become a visitor attraction before it was moved, and its last unsold piece now appears destined to remain on display rather than return to the market.
