A FARMER'S 30 year collection of militaria and aviation items, including the cockpit of a Canberra TT18 bomber, totalled around £80,000 when it went under the auctioneer's hammer.

Bids came from across the world for the sale at Rowley Farm, Holt Heath, near Worcester, as 85-years-old John Hancocks and his wife Pat, aged 83, said goodbye to his beloved collection so they can sell the family farm and retire.

It was a fascination with militaria and aeroplanes, which began as a child in Birmingham during the Second World War when the city was targeted by German bombers, that fuelled Mr Hancocks' amazing private collection, which he kept in the barns on his former dairy farm. As the collection had been viewed by invitation only, few people were aware of its existence until the auction conducted by Halls.

Mr Hancocks assembled thousands of items including his pride and joy, the Canberra TT18 bomber cockpit, which was in remarkable condition complete with flying log books. The cockpit was purchased in the auction for £8,600 by the trustees of the Avro Heritage Museum at Woodford, near Manchester and will now take pride of place in the museum.

“The collection has given me enormous enjoyment and now and it’s time for it to be shared with other people,” he said. “I now just want to sell the farm so that we can make a new start in our retirement and my collecting days have ended.”

Top selling lot was a Rolls Royce Griffon Mark 58 V12 engine from an Avro Shackleton surveillance aircraft, which sold for £14,500 to Julian and Roy Millington from Millington Racing Engines, Bridgnorth, who now plan to restore it to working condition.

Two Rolls Royce Pegasus 103 engines from a Harrier GR3 jump jet – one complete and the other in 2,200 carefully listed pieces – sold for £2,400 and £700 respectively while an Alvis Leonides 127 engine made £1,300, a Rolls Royce Viper engine made £950 and a Rolls Royce Derwent engine sold for £800.

Other leading prices were £2,000 for a Harrier ejection seat, £1,550 for a World War Two Airborne paratroopers bicycle, £1,650 for an Avro Vulcan ejector seat, £1,200 for a Hawker P1127 ejection seat, £1,100 for a World War Two aerial supply/weapons container, £1,050 each for a Canberra ejector seat and a mannequin wearing the 1944-’46 Airborne Division uniform. An unarmed de Havilland Firestreak first generation air to air missile sold for £1,850 and a Pheonix unmanned spy plane flew away to a new home for £750, while an original Anderson shelter from the Black Country sold for £190.

In a separate building, formerly the farm’s milking parlour, there was a comprehensive collection of Second World War items, ranging from manikins wearing full uniforms and a collection of radio equipment munitions and real and reproduction of parachute containers with fuel drums, the latter used in the epic war film A Bridge too Far based on Operation Market Garden in Arnhem, Holland. Adorning one of the walls, from the time when cattle were still being milked there, was a 1939 Watts fixed-pitch two blade propeller from an early Hurricane aircraft, which sold for £1,550.

Over the past 20 years, Mr and Mrs Hancocks welcomed a variety of clubs to view the collection and raised more than £4,000 for the West Midlands Air Ambulance in donations.

Andrew Beeston, Halls’ senior auctioneer and valuer, said: “We couldn’t have asked for more from the auction which was held in an improvised saleroom in a building on a Worcestershire farm where there was standing room only in the farm building, which had satellite Internet connection and attracted worldwide bidding. This was a sale four months in the making and concluded with a very happy vendor and buyers who were as passionate about their purchases as Mr Hancocks was about his collection. The collection lives on with other collectors.”

Mr Hancocks was brought up in Birmingham, but after his grandparents' garage business suffered bomb damage during the Second World War the family moved to Worcestershire and his parents bought the farm at Holt Heath in 1953. He married the following year and became a farmer.