A stately home caretaker was sacked after he accidentally gave away a historical Tudor artefact worth £5million. Brian Wilson was fired from his job at the Grade II listed, 16th century mansion after bosses found he had let a car salesman walk off with the 460 year old antique.
Mr Wilson claimed the historic nine feet wide oak overmantel - an ornamental structure above a mantelpiece - was 'rotten', had been set aside to be burned and that giving it away would save him the time of disposing of it. But an employment tribunal heard that auctioneers have since valued the carved piece of wood, which bears the royal coat of arms of Queen Elizabeth I, at £5m.
The removal of the overmantel led to the local council going to court to try to stop it being sold. But the legal action was dropped and according to a local auction house, the businessman who retrieved the antique, Andrew Potter, is now in the process of trying to find a buyer in the Middle East.
