Huge salt and pepper pots collection raises £4,000

Collecter Christine Edwards featured on TV shows including BBC One's Antiques Road Trip and Flog It

A woman's cherished collection of 4,500 salt and pepper pots has sold for £4,000 at auction.

Christine Edwards, who died last year aged 80, featured on TV shows including BBC One's Antiques Road Trip and Flog It.

Mrs Edwards, from Burnley in Lancashire, loved her expansive cruets collection, which included gnomes, Noah's Ark and Elvis Presley (complete with guitar).

Following the auction, her daughter Amanda Barrett said: "We're really, really pleased."

An Elvis-themed salt and pepper pot along with a guitar is among the lots

She added: "They have gone to collectors who will love them as much as Mum did."

The collection went under the hammer at Shaw's Auction House in Blackburn on Saturday.

The auctioneers said it was an "unique and extraordinary" collection featuring "just about any genre you could think of".

The auction gained considerable interest from the United States.

Mrs Edwards' family and loved ones had kept some of the more sentimental sets.

Ms Barrett had said her "shopaholic" mother "loved to be surrounded by pretty things".

The 59-year-old said her mum had "always been into antiques and always loved miniature things".

She added: "I don't know why she particularly [kept] salt and peppers but she loved the miniature nature of them."

Amanda Barrett (right) said it had been emotional preparing to sell her mum's prized collection

Ms Barrett said her mother never actually put salt in any of her collectable sets since it would corrode them.

"She would get angry if anyone suggested putting salt in them," adding that they had a normal run of the mill set for meal times.

Amanda Barrett has kept her mother's favourite camel-style salt and pepper pots