Auckland Castle Deer House (NZ215304)

© Copyright Paul Buckingham and licensed for 

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With its lofty social connections, Bishop Auckland and environs is blessed with many historical highlights and curiosities. One such item is the extraordinary Auckland Castle Deer House a little to the north of the town.

Bishop Auckland is, of course, the home town of the bishops of Durham. And in case you have ever wondered why these guys chose to live here instead of Durham City, well, you need look no further than Auckland Park – a magnificence expanse, purpose-built for hunting more than 800 years ago. It provided a means by which the famous Prince Bishops could entertain both themselves and their guests, as well as giving them an income by various means and a handy supply of timber, etc.

Included among the sumptuous mix of bits and pieces that adorns the park is the extravagant Deer House – built during Bishop Richard Trevor’s tenure in 1760 in the Gothic Revival style. It existed to provide shelter for the deer, and doubled as the animals’ dining area, too. The complex also had a resting/viewing area for the bishop and his guests, and the whole construction was built to impress, doubling as a sort of landscape folly for aesthetic purposes. It is essentially a courtyard surrounded by an arcade, with a gateway on one side and a tower on the other.

It is clear that these Prince Bishop chaps had far too much money, though the resulting extravagance that is Auckland Castle Deer House is a particularly fine – and, indeed, rare – example of its kind in the UK.

Fortress Kirk Merrington (NZ262315)

In the squabbling following King Henry I’s death in 1135, the Scots, under King David I, used the dispute as an excuse to lay claim to vast tracts of Northern England. To cut a long story short, they were largely successful, being granted most of what lay north of the Tyne, including Newcastle. And, though they weren’t actually presented with County Durham, they hoped to exert severe pressure over the Prince Bishops, too.

Scottish rule didn’t last, of course. It spanned what must have been eighteen bizarre years during 1139-57, before King Henry II brought Northumberland and Cumberland back under English rule for good.

In County Durham, though, the period was one of confusion. Scotland’s Chancellor at the time was one William Cumin. And when the Bishop of Durham, Geoffrey Rufus, died in 1141, King David tried to insert Cumin as his successor. The process was only ever half-completed, with Cumin never actually being consecrated – and so began a three year battle for the bishopric.

Cumin had some supporters, but plenty of opponents too, and the dispute was heated to say the least. Accounts of Cumin’s ‘rule’ are pretty severe, as his troops terrorised the city of Durham and beyond. In 1142, King David threw the towel in and abandoned Cumin, but the usurper battled on by producing a forged letter of support for his cause from the papacy. Word was then squeezed out to the pope of Cumin’s shenanigans and he was excommunicated in 1143 – but the fuss carried on unabated. Historian Simeon of Durham tells us of Cumin’s men incessantly making forages; whatever they could lay their hands on they plundered... wherever these men passed it became a wilderness. Their torments were of many and various kinds, difficult to describe and difficult to believe. Men were hung from the walls of their own howses... others... plunged into the bed of the river... everywhere throughout the town there were groans and various kinds of deaths.

The conflict came to a head at the village of Kirk Merrington in 1144, where Cumin’s unholy band of men holed themselves up in the church and, taking advantage of its slightly elevated position, fortified the site – principally by the digging of a ditch around the building. However, it was to no avail, and the ‘enemy’ overwhelmed them without too much fuss. He must have been quite a talker, though, as he managed to negotiate his way out of immediate danger by relinquishing his claim to Durham in return for lands to endow his nephew, Richard. He did spend some time in jail, but eventually found himself restored to prominence of a sort as Archdeacon of Worcester in 1157 – a post he had held thirty years earlier. And the same year in which, coincidentally, the northern counties were taken back by the English.

Nothing remains of the ditch at Kirk Merrington these days. In fact, very little of the original church remains, either, having been almost completely rebuilt in 1850-51.

Bad Start for the Lumleys (c.NZ300493)

The Lumley name looms large in the history of County Durham, and the rise of the family in the region begins with an Anglo-Saxon noble by the name of Ligulf (or Liulph) in the aftermath of the Norman Conquest. Fleeing the encroaching Normans in the south, he settled ‘up north’ and made a new home for himself among the followers of St.Cuthbert.

He married into the Northumbrian Royal family (to whom he was distantly related) and settled down at what became known as the ‘East Hall’, near the present-day village of Great Lumley. It is long since ruined and (I think) gone, but it was the scene of one of the seminal moments in North-East history.

After the Normans had so savagely ravaged, or ‘harried’, the north during 1069-70, King William I entrusted the bishopric of Durham to one William Walcher. A decent enough man by all accounts, he wasn’t the best of delegators, entrusting much of the administration of his lands to Gilbert and Leofwin, who did their very best to enrage the locals.

Our man Ligulf actually got on quite well with Walcher, but had a bit of a disagreement with him and his deputies on account of some rough treatment he had endured. Much affronted by the accusations, Gilbert and Leofwin conspired to seek revenge on the Saxon upstart. The former is thought to have paid Ligulf a not-so-friendly visit at his East Hall home and murdered the poor chap – probably sometime in the late 1070s

This did nothing to improve relations with the locals. The Normans and their supporters were hugely unpopular in the region, and the murder of Ligulf – a very well-liked guy – was the last straw. So although he wasn’t personally to blame for the crime, Walcher’s failure to punish the miscreants led directly to his own demise. As any student of North-East history will know, the bishop and his entourage (including his two hated henchmen) were soon afterwards jumped upon and slaughtered during a visit to Gateshead.

Walcher’s murder in 1080 brought a further ‘harrying’ for the north by King William’s men. Much of the local nobility were slain or scattered for good – but, as we know, the Lumley family managed to survive.

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Cosin-work at Sedgefield (NZ357288)

John Cosin was one of Durham’s most famous prince-bishops. He ‘ruled’ for a little over eleven years from December 1660, and was generally held in good regard for his work both within and without the Church – including promoting the interests of schools and charities.

Arguably his most famous legacy, however, is the unique style of church woodwork he championed – an elaborate and intricate cross between Gothic and Jacobean. Little of this remains today, however – the font cover in Durham Cathedral being the best example. Further fine examples of Cosin-work were tragically destroyed by fire at Brancepeth in 1998, leaving those remaining at St.Edmund’s Church, Sedgefield, as perhaps the best we have left of this distinctive style of craftsmanship.

Surprisingly, there are no good images to be had of St.Edmund’s beautiful interior décor on the Internet*. You’ll just have to go and see it for yourself, I guess.

* If you know of any let me know.

Sadberge’s Long History (NZ340168)

The village of Sadberge, a little to the east of Darlington, has one of those ancient-sounding place-names that you just know has a long and interesting history. And it has, though a good deal of it has always lain tantalisingly out of the reach of a succession of local historians.

What is known for sure is that a Roman road, Rykenield Way or Street, ran directly through the place, north-south, and that because of the settlement’s elevation, they probably maintained a signal station of sorts on the spot. Perhaps they even built a camp or a fort there, but no one has been able to find definitive evidence. Rumours persist of a later ‘Saxon castle’ in the vicinity of St.Andrew’s Church – perhaps a stronghold of the Dark Age Kingdom of Deira.

Next it was the Vikings. And it was they who gave the village its name – Sadberge deriving from ‘Set-berg’, meaning ‘flat-topped hill’. It became, in fact, the focus of their local wapentake (administrative centre), covering large tracts of land to the North of the Tees. Its status stuck for centuries thereafter, and became known as the ‘Earldom of Sadberge’.

It was so special, in fact, that it was not initially taken into the domain of the Prince Bishops of Durham in the early days of Norman rule – but was eventually added in 1189. It remained ‘special’, however, and continued to be administered almost as a separate county until deep into the 16^th century.

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A Peaceful Dissolution (c.NZ323101)

Neasham Priory was founded in the early twelfth century for a community of Benedictine nuns. Today not a trace of it remains, having occupied a spot, it is assumed, somewhere under and around Neasham’s main thoroughfare on the north bank of the River Tees. It is remarkable, certainly, for one thing … and perhaps another.

The known ‘surprising fact’ is that it was the only religious house in County Durham which was independent of the Durham Cathedral Priory – an astonishing state of affairs considering the Prince Bishop’s lengthy legal – nay, regal – reach. However, despite many grants, donations and privileges being bestowed upon the institution, the nunnery was never especially wealthy.

Though the Dissolution came to Neasham Priory as it did to most other similar houses, the transition appears to have been a peaceful one. Thanks largely to the foresight of Prioress Jane Lawson, the building and grounds were able to be gently passed into the hands of her brother, James Lawson, a Newcastle merchant, in December 1540. Indeed, it is likely that Jane lived on as a tenant farmer in the nunnery buildings, which themselves seem to have remained intact and unplundered post-Dissolution, until her death in 1557.

Surprising, then, that not a single stone remains in situ today.

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The Boldon Book (c.NZ360614)

 
As many people know, the famous Domesday Book of 1086 does not cover English lands north of the River Tees. For whatever reason – be it that the area had been ‘wasted’ by the Normans in previous years, or, more likely, that the region was considered ungovernable – the surveyors studiously avoided the present-day counties of Northumberland and Durham when the most famous manuscript in English history was compiled 900+ years ago.

King William I was happy to let the infamous Prince Bishops of Durham get on with it up here, it seems. And they were pretty powerful men in their day. Perhaps the most famous of them, Hugh de Pudsey, considered himself so important, in fact, that he commissioned a ‘Domesday Book’ of his own in 1183 – a work that came to be known as ‘The Boldon Book’.

Though it differs in both its function and scope from Domesday, it still provides an important snapshot of the region in the late twelfth century. Basically, it presents an assessment of the land’s worth, its annual returns and its customary tenures – and paints a picture of a settled system of Anglo-Saxon feudalism going back generations. Unlike its big brother, it presents a more colourful image of everyday life, with several amusing and seemingly mundane observations.

The Boldon Book does not cover all of Northumberland and Durham, but includes almost all of the latter, and large tracts of land of the former which were then the property of the Bishop of Durham (some areas on the southern bank of the Tweed and the area around Bedlington). The name ‘Boldon’ comes from the text’s tendency to refer back to the Boldon entry (one of the first in the manuscript) when a settlement’s tenurial set-up was similar to the aforementioned village (viz. ‘as of Boldon’). The book lists each settlement in turn, giving an account of tenants’ obligations – both individually and collectively.

The original text has long since been lost, but four copies survive – including one in Durham’s Chapter Library. Transcriptions and interpretations have appeared in the Surtees Society publications (vol.25), the Victorian County History, and one or two other places; but the most accessible by far is that published by Phillimore & Co. Ltd in 1982 – which can still be found in libraries and, occasionally, in second-hand bookshops or online.