Welsh whisky from 1900 sells for £14,500 at auction

Two bottles of Welsh whisky which date back almost 120 years have sold for £14,500 at auction.

The Welsh Whisky Distillery Company bottles were sold online by Peter Francis Auctioneers in Carmarthen.

One went for £7,300 and the other £7,200, both to private collectors, with the former set to stay in Wales.

Auctioneer Charles Hampshire said: "We're thrilled that a lot of people got involved in it - the sale has done exceptionally well."

The bottles, dating back to about 1900, went up in two separate lots, each with supporting paperwork.

Auctioneers thought the bottles of whisky would sell for about £3,000 each.

But Mr Hampshire said it was "almost impossible to put a figure on it because there's nothing to compare it to".

He said another bottle of the same whisky was auctioned in Cardiff in 2001 and is on show at Penderyn Distillery.

There is another at Cardiff's St Fagans National History Museum.

The Welsh Whisky Distillery Company was founded in Frongoch, Bala, Gwynedd, in 1889 but closed in the early 20th Century.

The distillery became a World War One prison camp - and more famously, an internment camp after the Easter Rising in the Republic of Ireland.

The whisky was bought by a wine merchant in Fishguard, Pembrokeshire, in the 1960s for £5 each.

Mr Hampshire said the person the merchant bought them from had the whisky in their family since 1914.

He added: "One is going back near the distillery, the other I'm not so sure about, so it's a nice finish, particularly for one of them."

Some of the old distillery buildings - which became an Irish internment camp