A FLEET of vintage tractors and farm machinery accumulated by well known Stocksfield farmer John Moffitt has been sold for over half a million pounds.

The Hunday Ferguson collection was compiled by Mr Moffitt after he had already received a royal seal of approval for the Hunday Tractor Museum at Newton, which was opened by the Queen Mother in 1979.

He started collecting vintage machinery in 1963, paying £8 for a machine he saw rusting in a field near Morpeth.

And so began a hobby that at one stage numbered more than 200 tractors and 200 engines, which he put on display at Westside Farm in Newton.  After the royal opening, it was named new museum of the year and was reserve museum of the year in a pan-European competition.

However, the museum closed in 1989, a victim of poor visitor numbers and inadequate parking facilities.

Mr Moffitt sold the whole collection to a museum in Wimbourne,Dorset, but immediately started a new hobby, concentrating on buying Ferguson tractors and implements, which he also housed at Newton.

It became one of the most complete Ferguson collections in the world, and Mr Moffitt used his encyclopedic knowledge to write a number of texts and books on the subject.

He sold the new collection in 2004 to fellow enthusiast Paul Rackham, of Norfolk, four years before his death in 2008.

And this week, the collection was broken up, as Mr Rackham himself sold all the items at auction for a total of £520,000.

Buyers came from all over the world, with one tractor being shipped out to Australia.