North Yorkshire County Council has gained almost a third of a million pounds through the sale of 110 acres of farmland.

Six lots of arable and grassland at Whixley, between York and Harrogate, and at Castley, south of Harrogate, raised some £331,000 at an auction held at the Bridge Inn Hotel, at Walshford, near Wetherby.

It is the latest in an ongoing programme of sales of farmland from the county farms estate, which the county council agreed to undertake in 1998.

Auctioneer Andrew Purkiss, of Mouchel North Yorkshire, who sold the land on behalf of the county council, said: "The sale prices realised demonstrate the continued strong demand for conveniently-sized pockets of land with good road frontage in North Yorkshire."

The land is likely to continue in its current agricultural role. All the buyers were local to the Whixley and Castley areas and none were developers.