A VINTAGE railway poster advertising Malvern as a tourist attraction has fetched nearly £500 at a London auction.

The colourful 30ins by 50ins poster was produced in 1925, for the Great Western Railway by artist Graham Petrie, a member of the Royal Institute.

It was snapped up by a private collector for £478 at Christie's in London on Friday.

The poster is a lithograph of a painting of the Malvern Hills and is one of a number which would have been displayed on railway platforms around the country.

"It was a very busy sale and there was fierce interest in that particular poster - it sold for exactly what we expected despite it being damaged," said Sophie North, a Christie's specialist in vintage posters.

"They were designed to attract people to the local area and done by the best artists and printed in quite large numbers but only a few survived."

The item was one of 344 vintage travel posters which went under the hammer at Friday's auction, fetching a total of £240,930.