Medal fetches £2,100

A medal awarded to an Oldham soldier 160 years ago was sold for £2,100 — £500 more than expected — at an auction in London.

The silver 1793-1814 Military General Service medal, awarded in 1848 to Oldham-born Private Samuel Dunkerly, had been expected to sell for between £1,400 and £1,600 at auctioneers Spink.

It was bought by a mystery bidder.

The auction also saw the first Victoria Cross to be awarded to a British Army soldier fetch more than £250,000.

Major John Simpson Knox, of the Scots Fusilier Guards, won the honour for his gallantry while fighting in the Crimean War between 1854 and 1855.

The medal, the highest military award for valour, went under the hammer along with a cannonball reputed to have blown off the Glasgow soldier’s arm.

The Victoria Cross was instituted in 1856, with the first awards backdated for service in the Baltic and Crimea.