The contents of Carlisle’s former Paris department store have brought more than £24,000 at auction.

Most of the proceeds will go to the liquidators of the business, which closed in September only 10 months after it opened in the former Hoopers building in Castle Street.

The auctioneer and valuer Gilbert Baitson, of Hull, conducted the auction online.

Bidding for the 902 lots closed on Friday.

Auctioneer Andrew Baitson said: “We sold the vast majority of the lots and, overall, it went a little bit better than expected. We are pleased with the figure raised. A lot of the buyers were local and some were looking to sell on [the goods] via eBay.

“But there were some from away and we even had one gentleman in Greece buying clothes and giftware.”

Gilbert Baitson has been conducting online auctions for three years.

Mr Baitson added: “You can’t beat the atmosphere of a traditional auction but this lent itself to doing a timed online auction.”

The items sold included shop fittings, greeting cards, clothing and lingerie.

The store itself, meanwhile, remains empty.

It occupies an iconic site facing Carlisle Cathedral and traded as Bulloughs for 96 years until 2006 when the Bullough family sold it to Hoopers, an upmarket department store chain based in Torquay.

Hoopers closed the store in 2012 only to reopen it two months later as a discount designer outlet. It closed for good in March 2013.

An attempt to sell the 38,000sq ft building at auction fell through.

Estate agents had been trying to attract restaurant chains as potential occupiers when Rebecca Menaged, a fine arts and jewellery expert from Cheshire, came forward to lease the building to open Paris in 2014.