ALTHOUGH he died more than 1,000 years ago, William de St Calais had a profound impact on Durham, establishing the prince-bishops as the first great northern powerhouse and starting the construction of the magnificent cathedral.
He also reshaped the way the cathedral worked. Previously it had been looked after by “clerks of St Cuthbert”, who were old-fashioned monks – “secular canons”, in the jargon – with wives and children. He wanted it to become a monastic cathedral, staffed by celibate Benedictine monks.
In 1083, the secular canons were fired, with the bishop sending them to live in Darlington, Norton-on-Tees and South Church, near Bishop Auckland. By happy coincidence, a picture of their home in South Church appeared here three weeks ago, and many people – including former Bishop Auckland mayor Barbara Laurie – responded to our appeal for information.
Barbara wonders if the canons were sent to the places where pilgrims stopped for their last night before the final leg of their pilgrimage to the shrine of St Cuthbert. They may have provided hospitality to the travellers and done PR for the great saint by carrying his message into the community.
At South Church, the canons attached themselves to St Andrew’s Church, and became a college overseen by a dean.
In 1292, Bp Antony Bek built them a deanery on the high land on the south bank of the Gaunless opposite the church – it is this building, which is the oldest inhabited building in the county, which we pictured in a ruinous state recently. It was a stronghold of a building, constructed to withstand even the Scots – although, unusually, it includes an anti-clockwise spiral staircase which is said to make it harder for right-handed defenders to wield their swords.
The canons and prebends of South Church had farmland from Evenwood Gate to Spennymoor and became wealthy. They rebuilt St Andrew’s Church so that it became the largest parish church in the county, and, supposedly, dug a tunnel from the deanery and under the Gaunless so they could pop up in the pulpit.
In 1428, the prebends moved into Castle Square outside the entrance to Auckland Castle, leaving the dean in the deanery.
In the 1540s, Henry VIII took over religious properties, and started giving them to his wealthiest backers. Sir Hugh Ascne was given the deanery. It ceased to be a religious building and spent the subsequent centuries as a farmhouse – and gradually fell down.
It was abandoned in the 1960s and vandalised, until Alan Trelford, a product designer at Glaxo and Black & Decker, spent eight years restoring it. He left in 1984 to become an engineer at Farnborough and in the 1990s, the Deanery became a restaurant.
It is now a very private house, hidden behind tall gates and even taller conifers, but it has a very special place in County Durham history.
IT is probably a ridiculously ambitious hope, but we’re going to try to tell the stories of the most important bishops over the centuries in future editions. Look out for the Bishop of the Week.
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