A vivid personal account of the Battle of the Somme sold today for more than £7,000 - more than 10 times its guide price.

The diary of Walter Hutchinson tells of the horror of gas, shells and scrambling over corpses on the first day of the battle on July 1 1916.

Hutchinson, a private in the 10th Battalion, York & Lancaster Regiment, survived the day, taking refuge in a dugout that night. His diary relates his fears for his friend Charley, whom he had not seen since that morning.

The first day of the battle, widely held to be the bloodiest single day in British military history, left the British with almost 60,000 casualties, including nearly 20,000 dead.

Hutchinson's hand-written account sold for £7,528 this afternoon at the London auctioneers Dix Noonan Webb. The guide price was £600-£800.

His Military Medal and a pocketwatch presented to him in 1917 by the local Heroes Committee in Conisbrough, South Yorkshire, were also part of the same lot.

Christopher Hill, from Dix Noonan Webb, said the items had been bought by a private buyer with an interest in first world war memorabilia. Mr Hill said: "He has a particular interest in the history of the war and collects diaries and manuscripts.

"The diary attracted a lot of interest today. There is a lot of emotion attached to the piece and also it has never been on the market before. It has come straight from the family."

The diary tells how Hutchinson set off towards the trenches from behind the lines at 10am that day, three hours after the first soldiers went "over the top".

"As soon as we got on the road we saw an awful sight for there was wounded men by hundreds coming from the line," he wrote.

As the company reached a rear trench, German shells were exploding around the men and they had their first taste of gas. "We hadn't gone far up the trench before we came across three of our own lads lying dead," the diary entry records.

"Their heads been badly damaged by a shell ... we had to go scrambling over the poor fellows - in and out, in and out. It was one of the most awful sights I had ever witnessed and at this point our own lads was coming out wounded as we was following them in."

The men soon got the order to drop everything, fix their bayonets and charge into the open. The diary records how Pte Hutchinson was hit by a piece of shell as he ran but kept going until he reached a trench - which had been the British frontline until the push that morning. "We saw some awful sights in it for a lot of wounded men had not been got out then," he wrote.

Hutchinson survived the war and he and his wife, Evelyn, went on to run a grocer's shop in the village of Maltby, South Yorkshire, before retiring to the Lincolnshire seaside resort of Cleethorpes. Hutchinson lived into his 80s.

The Battle of the Somme lasted from July 1 to November 18 and cost Britain and the Commonwealth over 420,000 casualties, with 125,000 dead. Around 60% of all British officers involved on the first day were killed. The French, who were also fighting at Verdun in 1916, suffered more than 200,000 casualties at the Somme.