AN atlas rescued from a fire at Wardington Manor fetched an auction record of £2.1m when it was sold at Sotheby's in London.

It was bought on Tuesday of last week by London dealer Bernard Shapero for a private client, and more than doubled its estimated price.

The atlas, the 1477 edition of Claudius Ptolemy's landmark atlas, was part of a collection of rare books owned by Lord Wardington that were rescued from a blaze that almost destroyed the manor house in April 2004.

The previous record auction price for an atlas was £1.46m paid for the Doria Atlas - also part of the Wardington collection - which was sold at Sotheby's in 2005.

The atlases were among hundreds of books and items of furniture carried from the burning manor, then home to Lord and Lady Wardington, by villagers who formed a human chain.

At the time of the fire, the couple were on holiday and the manor was occupied by their daughter Helen, her family, and the butler.

Firefighters from Oxfordshire, Warwickshire, and Buckinghamshire raced to the village after postman Derek Oxley spotted smoke and raised the alarm.

Lord Wardington died in July 2005, aged 81, but by then the couple had decided to sell his library collection which had been in storage since the fire.

They said then that some of the money raised would be used to restore the burned-out manor.

In October 2005, part of the collection including the Doria Atlas raised more than £6m at Sotheby's.

Lady Wardington has moved to a smaller property in the village.

A spokesman for Sotheby's said Ptolemy was an astronomer and geographer, thought to have lived during the first and second centuries, and that the atlas attracted bidders from around the world.