Bidders break estimate for medal awarded to Fife soldier killed by IRA

A medal awarded to a Fife-born soldier who was lured into a Belfast flat and murdered by IRA gunmen in the early 1970s sold for £2200 at auction nearly three times more than it had been expected to fetch.

The silver General Service Medal, with its Northern Ireland clasp, belonged to Sergeant Thomas Penrose, who was born at Pitlessie in 1944.

He was educated at Pitlessie Primary School and Bell Baxter High School, Cupar. He was in his late twenties when he was killed in 1973.

The medal had been expected to fetch between £600 and £800. The auction was held at Spink in Bloomsbury, London.