Auckland Castle

About this place

Thirteen life-size Spanish patriarchs hang in a dining room in a small north-east English market town, not in Madrid or London, and that is the first reason to make the twenty-kilometre trip from Durham to Bishop Auckland. Twelve of them are by Francisco de Zurbarán, painted as Jacob and his sons; Richard Trevor, Bishop of Durham, bought that set at auction in 1756 and hung it here, and here it has stayed. He missed the thirteenth, Benjamin, which is still at Grimsthorpe Castle, so the figure closing the row is an old copy. When the castle came up for sale in 2012 the set was in danger of being scattered, so the financier Jonathan Ruffer bought building and pictures together and spent years and a small fortune on the restoration before the doors reopened in autumn 2019. Be warned that individual canvases do go away for conservation, so do not assume the full row will be on the wall. The building is not a castle in the sense anyone who has seen Durham Castle or Edinburgh Castle would recognise: no keep, no ramparts, but a residence that served the Bishops of Durham for eight centuries, prelates who wielded princely as well as spiritual power, hence the marketing name Auckland Palace. The finest room is St Peter's Chapel, a banqueting hall of about 1190 that Bishop Cosin converted in the 1660s into one of the largest private chapels in Europe, with a painted timber ceiling you will spend a long time looking up at. Then comes the Throne Room, Georgian gothic designed by James Wyatt for Bishop Barrington in the 1790s, and the private apartments that show how the bishops actually lived until the last one moved out in 2012. The palace is not sold on its own: the ticket bundles the gardens and the Faith Museum, opened in October 2023, which walks through six thousand years of belief in Britain and carries the story up to the country's living faith communities, Muslims among them, a section few visitors expect and one that speaks directly to a Muslim traveller. The walled garden has been rebuilt around water basins, and behind the palace the free Deer Park stretches out with an eighteenth-century Deer House that looks like a toy fortress; an easy family stroll in decent weather, though the ground is uneven enough that the project itself suggests a powered wheelchair out there. Inside the palace, lifts reach every floor. Getting there: from Durham the car is simplest, about thirty minutes down the A688, with the North Bondgate car park a few steps from Market Place charging a pound for two hours or four pounds for the day. Buses from Durham take about an hour; there is no direct train, as Bishop Auckland's line runs hourly from Darlington and the station is a fifteen-minute walk from Market Place. The palace opens Wednesday to Sunday and bank-holiday Mondays only, 10:30 to 16:00, so arrive on a Monday or Tuesday and you will find the doors shut with only the free park and tower to console you. Summer brings no real queues and no compulsory booking; in winter the short daylight means arriving before noon if you want the gardens before an early dusk.