Top drawers: Queen Victoria's pants fetch record £12,000 at auction

A pair of Queen Victoria's cotton underpants have sold for a record-breaking £12,090 at auction today.

The knickers, which have a spacious 45-inch waistband, were sold as part of a collection of her other undergarments, including nightdresses, stockings and hats.

All items of clothing, from the Yesterday's World museum in East Sussex, bear the stamp VR - short for Victoria Regina.

Auctioneer Richard Edmonds said the royal clothing, dated to the late 1890s, close to the end of her life, is in "excellent" condition, because it was preserved in tissue paper in a temperature-controlled storeroom.

"This is a record-breaking price for Victorian royal intimate apparel," he said.

"Victorian royal clothing comes up for sale occasionally but rarely in this excellent condition," he added.

"Items of Queen Victoria's clothing were often given to members of the royal household, particularly after her death in 1901.

Historians were able to date the pants by measuring the waistband, he said: "As there's such a good photographic record of Queen Victoria, it's possible to calculate her waist measurement over time, so we know roughly when she would have worn items of this size."

In 2014, a pair of Queen Victoria's bloomers sold at an auction house in Kent for £6,200.