Artworks worth £80m stolen

2006-04-24 16:00

London - Prized artworks stolen from a 17th-century manor house were worth an estimated £80m, making the raid the largest property theft in British history, according to reports.

Raiders driving jeeps forced entry to the estate of property tycoon Harry Hyams in February, stealing around 300 museum-grade artefacts, police said.

Officers said they initially estimated the goods - which include paintings, clocks and silver - were worth around £20m.

However, The Art Newspaper, based in London and New York, claimed on Sunday that a new assessment by police and insurance companies values the works at four times that figure.

It would mean the value of the theft from Ramsbury Manor, at Ramsbury in southern England, is larger than the £53m stolen in Britain's largest cash robbery earlier this year.

"More is now known about precisely what was taken, and their values, and it appears that the figure is closer to £80m, although this remains an estimate," the newspaper reported in an edition published on Sunday.

Wiltshire police, investigating the theft, refused to comment on Monday on reports of the new valuation.

"Though it is difficult to put precise figures on works of this type, these items were of the very highest quality, the like of which have seen their value increase by tens if not hundreds of percent over the last few years," Julian Radcliffe, chairman of the Art Loss Register, the London-based international art recovery specialist, told The Associated Press.

Hyams, 78, amassed his fortune from a property empire that once included London's distinctive Centre Point office block and was ranked 204th in a 2006 Times newspaper survey of Britain's richest people.

- AP