An oil painting found hidden in a box in a disused garage fetched £55,000 at auction yesterday.

Fording the Stream, by Victorian landscape painter Sidney Richard Percy, had not seen the light of day for 50 years until a homebuyer discovered it hidden under a pile of logs.

After it went for £55,200 to a British buyer at Sotheby's South, the man who discovered the painting in the Sussex garage said: "I was so nervous. Now I know what it would feel like to be on Who Wants to be a Millionaire?"

The man, who does not want to be identified, said: "My new house is a fairly old property. Within the first week of moving in I decided to clear out the garage.

"I eventually got to the bottom of a pile of logs and found a long thin box.

"I took it out into the garden and began to unroll it. I had unrolled it about halfway when my jaw dropped."

The painting, by one of the most notable landscape painters of the 19th century, was expected to sell for between £12,000 and £18,000 at the sale at Billingshurst.

Sotheby's South painting specialist, James Gadd, said: "This is the sort of exciting discovery that is rarely made these days."