THE future of one of Britain's finest stately homes appears to have been secured after a group of its treasures sold for millions of pounds above their estimated value.

Nine works, that have been features of one of the world's greatest art collections at Castle Howard, in North Yorkshire, sold at auctions at Sotherby's in London for a total of £12.7m, £1.9 million above its top estimate.

The Howard family, which has owned the property for three centuries, sanctioned the sale after it became apparent receipts from the 235,000 visitors it receives annually would not fund the maintenance work it needed.

Reflecting both the history of the baroque property which featured in Brideshead Revisited and the tastes of its ancestral owners, the Howard family, the works ranged from Roman antiquities to Old Master paintings and 17th Century Italian furniture.

Highlights of the sales included a 1652 work by one of Rembrandt's favourite pupils, Ferdinand Bol, titled Portrait of a Boy, which smashed its top £3 million estimate by selling for £5.2m, a new record for the artist.

A powerful portrait of King Henry VIII, from the studio of Hans Holbein, achieved £965,000.

It was painted in 1542, the year the king's fifth wife, Catherine Howard – a distant relative of the Howard family who live at the 145-room residence – was beheaded for alleged adultery.

A 1st Century monumental quartz granite vase from Roman Egypt, made for the palace of the Roman Emperor Nero, almost doubled its top estimate of £600,000, by selling for £1.1m.

A work painted by Canaletto's nephew, Bernardo Bellotto, when he was 16 and working in the celebrated artist's studio, titled Venice, a View of the Grand Canal, sold for £2,557,000, slightly above its lowest estimate.

Sir Thomas Lawrence's portrait of William Spencer Cavendish, the 6th Duke of Devonshire who was the only son of the political hostess Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, sold for £365,000, more than ten per cent above its low estimate.

An early 16th Century Florentine relief of the Madonna and Child, from the workshop of Jacopo Sansovino, which had been valued at between £400,000 and £600,000, sold for £1 million.

A Sotheby's spokesman said interest in the work stemmed from it being one of only of 13 surviving examples of Sansovino’s celebrated group of cartapeste that remained in private hands.

A pair of Italian pietre dure mounted, inlaid ebony cabinets, which were crafted around 1625 and thought to be conceived for the Papal Borghese family, topped their top estimate by £100,000, selling for £1.3 million.

A 1650 bust of Anne of Austria, Queen Consort and Regent of France, and a late 16th Century bust of a nobleman sold for a total of £253,500.

After the sale Nicholas Howard, who took over the stately home's running earlier this year, and his brother, Simon, who has worked to boost the property's income over decades, said the decision to sell the treasures had proved successful, In a statement they said: "Over the centuries, our family has had the extraordinary good fortune to be the custodians of many great treasures.

"We very much hope that those that were sold today will bring as much joy to their new owners as they have to us and to our ancestors.

"Their sale will help us to secure the future of Castle Howard as it moves into its fourth century.”