Castles & Walled Gardens

Government backed “levelling up” has mixed results. That’s my way of saying taxpayers’ money is usually spent as ineffectively in this area as it is for overseas aid.

Private investment works better as I saw on my trip up north. I haven’t been to the Duchess of Northumberland’s gardens at Alnwick. Her profligacy was criticised at first but they have become a big attraction drawing visitors to Northumberland and employing local people. It cost more than £40 million to realise her dream. Incidentally, like The Auckland Project, it is a charity.

The Auckland Project has cost at least £140 million to date and Jonathan Ruffer has plans to make Bishop Auckland even more of an attraction for visitors with money to spend. The town looks a bit sad now with many vacant properties. I was told they all belong to Jonathan, as everybody called him. He buys anything that comes on the market, driving out the take-aways and chippies. I haven’t seen his blueprint but it’s a safe bet there will be at least one boutique hotel, high-end shopping and dining and maybe another museum. When visitors leave they may take the same road as we did. Raby Castle is just twenty minutes away towards Darlington.

Raby has also invested in becoming a major visitor attraction. There is a huge car park compartmentalised by beech hedges and out of sight, a new Vinery cafe seating more than two hundred and well converted barns and stables for events or repurposed as shops selling the usual stuff but including frozen venison from the estate and potato vodka. (Bishop Auckland has its own craft gin.) All this is set in completely re-designed gardens the main elements of which are a terraced lawn leading down from The Vinery to a five acre walled garden. Lady Barnard had a hand in the design but the credit really belongs to Luciano Giubbilei. His creation is intimate and concentrates on horticulture. You might think that applies to all gardens but fashionable designers can be obsessed with eye-catching features like fountains, canals, bridges and expanses of elegant paving – all too urban and too European for County Durham. Lady Barnard kept Luciano on a tight leash and the result is an archetypical English garden adapted to modern tastes. It was wet on Thursday and the schools have gone back, yet the car park (no coaches here or at Bishop) was pretty full and at 12.30 The Vinery was 90% full.

Of course the main attraction at Raby is the 14th century castle. Harry Vane (12th Lord Barnard) inherited from his father in 2016. Until then the family had lived in the castle and nothing much has been changed since the present generation took over. At Bishop Aukland everything is state-of-the-art as it is in the gardens and outbuildings at Raby. Step into the castle and you step back seventy-five years. The pictures, furniture and architecture (some stupendous ceilings) are of the highest quality but it is all understated. There is no signage to speak of although the volunteers in every room are helpful and the pictures have mostly never been cleaned. It is lovely to see a house that has been lived in almost continuously for so long and has retained so much over the ages. But I wonder how there will be room for the two hundred or so visitors we saw having lunch to look around inside the castle; and will they “get it”?

We were urged to visit the deer park – not an attractive proposition in the rain and not a treat for me with Richmond, Bushy and Windsor deer parks so close at home. I did not take a single picture on Thursday but you may find a little exploration on the internet rewarding. After Raby we went back to Durham to visit the cathedral briefly and catch a train to London.