Kent, UK - This week we heard that The Old Radiator Co Ltd has sold its most expensive radiator ever, a rare and fabulous burnished cast iron early column radiator with a classical moulded plinth mounted on lion's paw feet, offset diamond or rhomboid section columns terminated by a dentil-style motif and capped off by a cornice matching the plinth. The radiator was five feet long by 29 inches high and 17 inches deep, weighing roughly half a ton, and believed to have sold for around £4,000.

Not much is known about this model of radiator. It is probably English and could be by Nason or Bundy. An example is situated in the 1895 billiard room of Lord Armstrong's Cragside in Northumberland, home of many Victorian heating and lighting innovations and inventions, so the radiator could have been made in one of Armstrong's various Newcastle iron foundries. The architect for the billiard room was either Frederick Waller junior or senior, a Gloucestershire father son partnership responsible for buildings in an eclectic style of the gothic and tudorbethan taste. Waller senior (1922 - 1905) trained under civil engineer and county surveyor Thomas Fulljames (1808-1874) who designed many of Gloucestershire's institutional buildings, with no doubt innovative heating systems, and also undertook work for Matthew Boulton, an early adopter of hot water heating. Fulljames also famously came up with his solution to a crossing of the River Severn which he suggested should be a barrage in 1849.

The Old Radiator Co has another similar model of this radiator in stock which it has named 'Large Double Church' radiator. The company has created names for many of its old radiators, such as 'Chubby Churchill', some of which have now been adopted by its competitors. Without a known manufacturer, the radiator could have been called 'Lord Armstrong' or 'Cragside' or simply a Victorian Gentleman's Billiard Room Radiator.