Founding of the Bowes Museum (NZ056163)

The extraordinary mansion that is the Bowes Museum lies on the eastern fringes of Barnard Castle. Designed and constructed in the French Renaissance style, it is perhaps the North-East’s greatest oddity, being so obviously out of place. And, perhaps just as strangely, it is a purpose-built museum and has never been used as a residence.

It was the brainchild of a rather odd couple, too: the illegitimate John Bowes, a rogue branch of the family line that was to produce Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, and one Joséphine Benoîte Coffin-Chevalier, Countess of Montalbo (San Marino) who was an employee of a Parisian theatre. The two had met and fell in love during one of John’s long stays in the French capital, during which time he bought the establishment in which Joséphine worked. They were married in 1852.

John’s wife was big on art, and her husband soon came to share her passion. And so, around a decade into their marriage, they began collecting pieces of art for their own gratification and with the long term intention of establishing a public museum – funded by John’s coal industry dabblings. The collection soon grew to mammoth proportions.

It is simply assumed that John & Joséphine’s English base, Streatlam Castle (a few miles NE of Barnard Castle), became too small to house the collection, hence the necessity of a new purpose-built museum. However, it seems that the spectacular structure almost ended up at Calais…

The late Mr Bowes and his first wife, the Countess of Montalbo, when they formed the idea of founding a museum, did not originally propose to locate it at Barnard Castle. Their first idea was to place it at Calais, within the Countess of Montalbo’s own country, and yet looking towards England, Mr Bowes’ country. They abandoned this idea from a consideration of the permanently unsettled state of politics in France. They thought there was less chance of revolutions occurring in England than in France, in which the works of art might be injured. 

[from an account by Mr E.Y.Western, sole acting executor under the will of the late Mr John Bowes of Streatlam Castle]

It took years to bring the plan to fruition. It was not until 1872 that the building work commenced in earnest, but it then ceased in 1882 on account of a slump in the coal trade. In the meantime, Joséphine died in 1874 and John followed her in 1885 – but they made provisions in their wills for the completion of the museum. The establishment finally opened to the public in 1892 and was a massive success.

Roots of Beamish Museum (NZ220540)

The Colliery, Beamish Museum

(© Copyright Ashley Dace and licensed for reuse under this Creative CommonsLicence)

In 2010, Beamish Museum celebrated its 40^th birthday. It is the oldest regional ‘open air’ museum in England.

Incredibly, the idea for ‘Beamish’ was first floated back in 1958. It stumbled forward in fits and starts during the 1960s, gradually gathering items of all shapes and sizes from the public which were stored in an old army camp near Brancepeth. In total, more than twenty huts and hangars were filled with material.

Thanks, primarily, to the efforts of its first director, Frank Atkinson, the project gathered steam, and the collection was eventually brought to its current site near Beamish village in 1970 – the moment when the first staff members were formally appointed and the museum properly born. Even then, the amount of material was substantial, ranging from the smallest household item up to engines, vehicles and whole shops. Such was the enthusiasm for the scheme that a ‘Friends’ support group was established several years before the museum opened.

In 1971, the very first public exhibition – entitled ‘Museum in the Making’ – was established in Beamish Hall, and it was such a success that the final go-ahead was given to the concept of an ‘open air’ museum in the hall’s grounds. The following year saw the opening of the site as we know it today – if a good deal shorn of its now familiar attractions. A few cottages were erected in 1972, and in 1973 the railway station and pithead were constructed and the first trams began to run.

In the forty years since, Beamish has gone from strength to strength, picking up many national and international awards along the way. It is almost entirely self-funding, and attracts between 300-400,000 visitors per year.

The Dice Players (NZ430158)

Preston Hall Museum is, arguably, best known for the valuable oil painting called The Dice Players. Usually housed in a special room with dimmed lighting in conditions akin to those of the Mona Lisa, the atmospheric effort of artist Georges de La Tour is one of the North-East’s most prized assets.

La Tour was a 17^th century French Baroque painter who specialised in candlelit scenes such as that depicted in The Dice Players. Both he and his family died in an epidemic in 1652 – the painting in question being very probably his last work. He was soon forgotten to history, until after World War II, when a revival of interest began.

His works, though, were difficult to pin down and/or identify. The Dice Players, for example, was left to Stockton Borough by a local resident in 1930, and nothing much was thought of it at the time. The importance of the canvas was not realised until the 1970s, when it was properly identified.

[N.B. The painting has been loaned out to various galleries of late – e.g. the Shipley in Gateshead – but will presumably be reinstated at Preston Hall Museum on its re-opening in the Summer of 2012]

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Preston Hall (NZ430158)

© Copyright Peter and licensed for reuse under this Creative CommonsLicence.

The Preston Hall we all now know and love as one of the region’s premier museum attractions was once, of course, a private residence. Built in 1825 to displace the original manor house (which itself was not demolished until 1974), it was rather less grand than the structure we see today. When David Burton Fowler raised the new pile it had little of its ‘modern’ trimmings.

In 1882, the hall was sold by the Fowler family to Robert Ropner, a high-profile immigrant shipping magnate. A Prussian by birth, Ropner spent years building up his business in, first, Hartlepool, and then Stockton (from 1888). He moved into politics, where he was Conservative MP for Stockton during 1900-10, was knighted (in 1901) and then raised to the baronetcy.

Ropner spent many years developing Preston Hall. He changed its entrance from the river side to the existing position, added a ballroom, as well as an elaborate porch and winter garden/conservatory (latter two illustrated above). He also constructed many of the estate’s outbuildings for his staff and servants.

Sir Robert Ropner died, aged 85, in 1924. The family lived on in the house until 1937, and it eventually passed into the hands of Stockton-on-Tees Council in 1947. It then re-opened as the borough’s museum in 1953.

The museum is presently undergoing a multi-million pound facelift, and is set to reopen in the Summer of 2012.

Official website here.

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South Shields Museum & Art Gallery (NZ364673)

This splendid institution turned 150 years of age in April 2010 and, though it’s a little late, let’s have a celebratory look back at its history.

The building now occupied by the museum and art gallery was built during 1859-60 as the South Shields Mechanics Institute for the purposes of providing the working classes with a means by which they may educate themselves. Sir Robert Ingham, MP for South Shields and President of the Mechanics Institution, would have had quite a say in the matter, no doubt, and it was he who laid the foundation stone in 1859. Built at a cost of £2,700, the Institute was opened in April the following year, but proved too costly to run so was sold onto the Borough Corporation in 1871 for use as its planned Free Library.

Eventually, in October 1873, the building was indeed opened as the town's first public library. However, within a few years the building began doubling up as a display venue for relics from the nearby Roman fort, and a move was made to open a museum within the building – a development which came to fruition in 1876. As the years went by, other artefacts would be added to the museum’s collection as seafarers brought items home from all over the world.

The museum and library continued to share the building until 1976, when the new library complex opened in Prince Georg Square – after which the old building was rebranded as the ‘Museum and Art Gallery’. Since then, significant improvements have been made to the building, inside and out – most notably in 2001 and during 2003-4.