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The musical instrument previously owned by Albert Einstein has been sold £860k at auction.

This 1894 Zunterer violin is considered as Einstein's first instrument while being initially expected to fetch approximately £300k as it went up for auction in South Cerney, Gloucestershire.

A book on philosophy which Einstein gifted to an acquaintance also sold for the amount of two thousand two hundred pounds.

Each of the final bids will be subject to a further commission of 26.4% added to them, meaning the final price for the instrument will be £1m.

Auctioneers estimate that the fees are applied, the sale could be the record for a violin not previously owned by a concert violinist or created by the Stradivarius workshop – as the earlier record being held by an instrument that was possibly performed during the Titanic voyage.

Another bike saddle also belonging by the physicist remained unsold in the bidding and may be re-listed.

The pieces presented in the sale were given to his colleague and scientist the physicist Max von Laue in the latter part of 1932.

Shortly afterwards, Einstein departed to the United States to escape the growth of prejudice and Nazism in the country.

Von Laue passed them on to a contact and Einstein fan, Margarete Hommrich after twenty years, and it was a family member who recently decided to sell them.

A second violin previously belonging by Einstein, that was presented to the scientist when he arrived in the US during 1933, was sold in a sale for $516,500 (£370k) in the United States in 2018.