Bottomley acts to stop casket leaving Britain

The Government stepped in yesterday to stop a 12th-century casket which might have held the remains of Thomas a Becket from leaving the country after a vociferous campaign to save it for the nation failed.

Amid speculation that the casket would otherwise have been on its way to North America, Virginia Bottomley, the Secretary of State for National Heritage, immediately stepped in to block its export after its sale to an anonymous private collector for pounds 4.18m yesterday.Citing the casket's history for her intervention, she has delayed any possible export until expert advice has been taken.

The sale of the Becket Chasse, bought in the Seventies by British Rail Pension Fund, prompted fierce criticism that not enough was done to keep the gold and blue casket. David Barrie, director of the National Art Collections Fund, which mounted a publicity blitz to attract public support for the casket, said he was "bitterly disappointed".

The disappointment was compounded by a last-minute entrance into the bidding race by the National Heritage Memorial Fund, a national body with an annual pounds 8m grant to save items for the nation.

The Memorial Fund bid pounds 3.6m at yesterday's auction at Sotheby's in London, a sum which would have secured the casket in advance of the sale. Mr Barrie said the pension fund trustees would have accepted pounds 2.2m if it had been possible to raise such a sum.

Kathryn Long, investment director for the 250,000 pensioners, said they were absolutely delighted that the casket had made nearly three times its estimated price. The trustees had tried to be helpful to the museums, initially offering the casket to the British Museum, where it had been on loan. "The trustee board has a regulatory responsibility to do the best it can for its members," she said.

More recently, Dr Alan Borg, director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, made an appeal which brought a flood of public donations. Support from the National Art Collections Fund (NACF) and the Heritage Lottery Fund - which has the same trustees as the Memorial Fund - bought the total to pounds 1.7m, but this was not enough.

Responding to the NACF criticisms, a Memorial Fund spokesman said it was a fund of last resort and a difficult precedent would have been set if it had stepped in earlier.

Lord Rothschild, the fund's chairman, said: "All the expert advice suggested that we should not have bid above the level at which the Chasse was sold. Much as though we would have liked to have acquired the casket, we felt that there must be price discipline with public money."