BISHOP AUCKLAND once had a large village green, stretching from the Bishop’s Palace in the east up to Town Head and Bondgate in the west. An old Roman road, Dere Street, marched across the green on its way from Piercebridge in the south to Binchester in the north.

And round the edges of the green ran a footpath.

This footpath has been concerning us these last couple of weeks because at least part of it was once known as “the Doctors Tunnel”, a semi-subterranean passageway that was the apparent haunt of ghosts, murderers and even a stray lion.

The green is said to have been in existence from Bishop Auckland’s beginnings. Certainly it was there in the 12th Century when the Bishop took up residence in the manor house that became his palace. The bishop’s bondsmen – his labourers, bound by a contract, who worked on his farmland – lived in High Bondgate.

Gradually, buildings – houses, shops, pubs – encroached on the green, although an open space was kept at the eastern end for the market. The buildings generally followed the line of the footpaths: North Bondgate seems likely to have been the northern edge of the green, and perhaps Fore Bondgate followed a “desire line” that dashed across the middle of the green.

Among the buildings in Fore Bondgate was Shepherd’s Inn, which really took off in the 18th Century when the Spencer family from Hunwick had it. They extended it, both upwards and backwards.

They went upwards to create a rooftop viewing platform so that drinkers armed with binoculars could sit and look northwards to the racecourse which used to be where the Eleven Arches golf course is today – where Auckland Castle is to start work in April creating an exciting-sounding historical theme park.

As the Shepherd’s was extended backwards, it encroached upon the old footpath which had run along the south side of the village green. There were no planning authorities in those days, but perhaps when locals saw their ancient right of way being built across, they kicked up a fuss, so the publicans lowered the ground level so that the path could pass beneath their extension.

“It was a very narrow, unpaved path, which went down a few steps, under the building and then up a few steps,” says local historian Barbara Laurie. “The middle part of it was completely dark and you got a very uneasy feeling down there.”

Stories abound about ghosts and murders taking place in this dark walkway persist into the 1950s, although the only hard evidence of anything out-of-the-ordinary happening in there was reported in Memories 209. Brian Gargate of Aycliffe Village told us a brilliant police story from the 1920s concerning PC Robinson who apprehended in the passageway a male lion which had escaped from a travelling menagerie performing in the Market Place.

With the extension complete, the Shepherd’s had plenty of rooms to let. Magistrates hired one of them as their court.

One 18th Century magistrate was a doctor from out of town. To kill two birds with one stone, he informed his poorer patients – those who couldn’t afford a home visit – to come to the Shepherd’s for a consultation after he’d finished on the bench. He obviously didn’t want a load of unwell people coughing their guts up in Fore Bondgate, so he told them to wait for him out the back in the semi-subterranean passage.

Thus, the passage acquired its nickname “the Doctors Tunnel”.

And perhaps also thus it acquired its reputation for being haunted.

“In bad weather, these poor souls invariably sheltered in the tunnel,” writes Ian Robson, “and it’s not too hard to imagine passers-by being suddenly startled by moans and groans coming from inside.” Indeed, if the doctor had performed a dental extraction or even an amputation in the back room of the Shepherd’s, all sorts of ghoulish noises would have been heard echoing in the tunnel.

Despite this, the Shepherd’s reputation as one of Bishop Auckland’s premiere meeting places continued into the 19th Century, partly because on its first floor it had the largest meeting room in town. In 1852, a government inspector up from London held a public inquiry there into the state of the town’s health, but in 1861, the town hall was built in the Market Place and it became the natural venue for such gatherings.

We can’t find a date for when the inn closed, nor for when the tunnel disappeared. Now the Shepherd’s building is occupied by Sam Zair's cafe and the Spice Lounge restaurant.

BLOB Thanks to Barbara Laurie, Ian Robson and Peter Daniels for their help with this story.

THE Shepherd’s Inn was still serving in the late 19th Century when Bishop Auckland had at least 60 pubs. The Bay Horse Inn, a few yards west from the Shepherd’s in Fore Bondgate, is said to be County Durham’s oldest hostelry, and a few yards east, on the corner with the Market Place, was the Talbot Hotel. After the brewers Plews, of Darlington and Bedale, spent nearly £30,000 rebuilding it, it became the town’s leading hotel in the 1870s, with bedrooms for travellers and stables for their horses.

Miners, ironworkers and labourers from all the outlying south Durham industrial villages were magnetically drawn into the centre of Bishop for a drink, and probably a fight, after which they’d get the train back home.

However, if they were too drunk, railway staff would forbid them from travelling. Therefore, as they staggered up Newgate Street to the station, they needed to sober up pretty quickly.

The busiest time of the week for the chemist’s and grocer’s shop, was between seven and eight o’clock on Saturday evening as the drunks called in for a pint of strong, detoxicating vinegar.

In Derek Hebden’s booklet published in 1972 entitled Bishop Auckland 100 Years Ago, he quotes a grocer’s assistant who worked in Newgate Street in the 1870s.

“As it got to train time, into the shop would come rather unsteady lady customers supporting their blaked and speechless husbands,” said the shopkeeper. “I got busy with my pint pots and vinegar and helped to pour it down the gullets of the inebriated gents. The operation was performed on dozens, and never once did any refuse to swallow the deep brown liquid from the blue and white pint pots. It looked like beer, and that was enough. It was always successful and by the time they staggered up to the station, supported by the so-called weaker sex, they were just not drunk enough to be disqualified by Mr Crawford, the stationmaster.”

DOUG HATTON moves us on to another Bishop Auckland town centre curio.

“I read with interest about the Doctors Tunnel,” he writes, “and it sparked a discussion among my friends about another tunnel or alley leading from Newgate Street to Bondgate. It was referred to as “pittal alley” or “pittal boy alley” because above its Newgate Street is a little naked statue similar to the little boy in Brussels. Rumour has it that when it rains the water runs down the statue and onto the ground, hence the “pittal” reference.

“We wondered if anyone could throw any light onto this statue – how and why it came to be in the middle of Bishop Auckland and what was the original name of the alley?”

Doug is referring to a member of Bishop Auckland’s under-rated collection of late Victorian buildings. It is next to the excellent Yorkshire Bank building, which was built in a light-coloured sandstone in 1898 in a rather grand Scottish baronial style – it has towers and turrets and lions holding shields.

Almost as grand is Doug’s red brick building, built around the same time. It has a balustrade along its roofline, some excellent headers above its windows and, best of all, an arched ground floor doorway with a curious naked cherub above it.

In recent times, the building has been occupied by Boots the chemist and Thorntons the chocolate shop, but now it stands largely empty. Can anyone tell us why it was built and where the archway led to?

And, the biggest question of all, has anyone stood in the pouring rain in Newgate Street to see if the water runs off our naked little man in imitation of the Manneken Pis statue in Brussels?