VINTAGE chairs which once adorned a council chamber and were sold off for £100 a piece on eBay are now for sale for £7,500 a pair after being restored.

Sixty striking leather seats were specially commissioned for Darlington Borough Council’s chamber, which was officially opened by Princess Anne in 1970.

Most of the chairs, by renowned British furniture designed Peter Hoyte, were sold off for just £100 each by the council two years ago - a total of £5,000.

Now The Northern Echo has found a pair of the restored chairs on a vintage website for £7,500.

And a pair has already been sold and shipped to Japan for £4,500 after restoration, the seller said.

The decision to replace the chairs with lighter, more movable chairs, was linked with the council’s plans to move Crown Street Library to the Dolphin Centre and move weddings from the leisure centre to the council chamber. Independent councillor Kevin Nicholson said it had been clear the chairs were worth something and he felt the council had ‘rushed’ the decision to sell them.

A Darlington Borough Council spokeswoman said: “The 60 chairs from the council chamber were sold more than two years ago on the basis of advice from an independent valuer, with high storage and transportation costs taken into account. The fact that it has taken two years – and that restoration has been required – to reach the reported sum for just two chairs out of the 60 indicates that it would not have been economically viable for the council to hold on to all of the chairs in the slim hope of a high return.”

“It is not unreasonable that once they entered the vintage market that a specialist dealer would be able to find someone willing to pay a higher sum."