KYNREN, the £30m spectacular romp through English history, opened to the public on Saturday night.
Here's four things we learned:
Kynren puts Bishop Auckland on the tourism map
Even before the opening night Kynren was making waves. Travel publisher Rough Guides has ranked the Eleven Arches spectacular Kynren, at Bishop Auckland, at number six in its top ten tourist attractions to visit in 2016.
The preview made newspaper headlines and television while last night's show was attended by national journalists.
Bishop Auckland hasn't enjoyed this kind of publicity since Auckland Castle was built nearly 800 years ago.
Businesses are already feeling the effect, with accommodation bookings running almost 50 per cent ahead of last year, and word-of-mouth means this is only the beginning.
If the post-Referendum economy is going to dip, Kynren couldn't have come at a better time for Bishop.
It's the ultimate volunteer production
Although the scale and ambition of Kynren puts it up there with Hollywood, the most amazing thing about it is the discretionary effort that makes it possible.
Hundreds of volunteers work behind the scenes and on the stage to make Kynren what it is.
After last night some members of the audience couldn't quite believe they were watching volunteers.
Ann Rumney, from South Shields, said: "For volunteers to put this on is marvellous."
It's the vision of one man
Jonathan Ruffer, city hedge fund manager with a personal fortune of about £380m, according to the Sunday Times Rich List, came in 2013 to Bishop Auckland, a town which had even been forsaken by McDonalds. He grew up about 30 miles south in Stokesley, and had been alerted by The Northern Echo’s campaign to the secret sale by the Church Commissioners of the 17th Century Zurbaran paintings in Auckland Castle.
A man of deep Christian faith who for many years had been using his City fortune to combat inner city deprivation, he bought the paintings and the castle for £15m, and donated them back to the town.
“I came up to the region because I wanted to see a spring in everybody’s step, and we started off by acquiring the Zurbarans – that was the flag up the flagpole, that was the mouth and Kynren is the trousers,” he says, with a typically colourful, Rufferian turn of phrase.
Later that year, the former Eleven Arches golf course, on the opposite bank of the River Wear to Auckland Castle, came up for sale. In the early 19th Century, a Bishop of Durham had bought the land so he could demolish the unsightly coalmine a neighbour had built on it; Mr Ruffer also knew he had to have it.
This is only the beginning
Incredibly, Ruffer has even more ambitious plans for Bishop Auckland - starting with Auckland Castle. If Kynren is indicative this is going to be a hugely exciting time to live in South West Durham.
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