Church collection box linked to The Beatles to go on sale

The box could fetch £500, says the manager of The Beatles Shop

The collection box at the church where Sir Paul McCartney and John Lennon played together for the first time is to go under the auctioneer's hammer.

McCartney joined Lennon's first band The Quarrymen - which later became The Beatles - in a session at St Peter's Church in Woolton, Liverpool in 1957.

The Beatles Shop will host the online auction. Manager Stephen Bailey said he really did not know the box's value.

Perhaps £500, he wondered, "or enough to buy a new church collection box".

McCartney impressed so much at the St Peter's Church hall session he was invited to join The Quarrymen

"The church was buying a new one and wondered what to do with the old one," Mr Bailey explained.

"The committee then decided to try and sell it and put the proceeds towards church funds."

He said there had already been "lots of interest" in the wooden box - made by a member of the congregation in 1929 - from Beatles fans in the United States.

McCartney - then a 15-year-old schoolboy - impressed The Quarrymen so much with the session at St Peter's Church hall he was invited to join the band.

Lennon was a member of the church's youth club and attended services there with his aunt, Mimi Smith.

Other items available in the auction on 29 August include an autograph book, containing the Fab Four's signatures, that belongs to the cousin of Beatles roadie Mal Evans.

A collection of rare photo prints from the famed Abbey Road LP cover shoot will also go under the hammer.