WITH hours to go before the Church of England considers the future of its most valuable collection of paintings, campaigners stepped up their fight to keep them in the North castle where they have hung for 250 years.

The Northern Echo and Bishop Auckland Civic Society have been backed by national and regional art institutions and politicians in their battle to save 13 life-sized portraits which hang at Auckland Castle, the official residence of the Bishop of Durham.

Yesterday, Gabriele Finaldi, curator of Spanish paintings at the National Gallery, in London, described the Francisco de Zurbaran series Jacob and his Twelve Sons, brought to County Durham by Bishop Richard Trevor in 1756, as "one of the great treasures of the North-East".

Mr Finaldi said: "It would be a cause for enormous regret if they were sold from Auckland Castle where they have been for two and a half centuries. If they can't stay at Auckland Castle then Bowes Museum must be the place."

Mr Finaldi said the paintings were difficult to value because nothing like them has been sold in living memory.

If the commissioners do decide to sell, Bowes Museum director Adrian Jenkins has been sounding out potential funding bodies. He said: "The paintings are not only a major regional heritage asset, they are a national asset.

"Were they to be lost from the region, the people of the North-East will have lost a part of their cultural identify for ever. We must make every effort to preserve this vital part of our heritage."