An Auckland timeline

ROMANS THE high hill above the Wear was probably the site of a Roman outpost of their important settlement at nearby Binchester. In 1765, when the park bridge over the Gaunless was built, a Roman urn of human bones was discovered, leading to the suggestion that part of the park was used as Binchester’s cemetery. A Victorian historian, the Reverend James Raine, thought the park was perfect for such a function: "Its green dells and sweet recesses, more beautiful, doubtless, then than even now, would captivate the eye of the foreigner; and here, where he had wandered for his amusement in his leisure hours, he would choose a resting place for the objects of his affection."

1000AD "Aclit", which became Auckland, is first mentioned. It may come from the same oak-tree related derivation as Aycliffe, although the best theory is that it means "additional land". In 1018, King Canute, to make up for his bloody seizure of the crown, gave Bp Aldhune of Durham Staindropshire plus additional land at Escomb and Newton Cap. In the 13th Century, a u and an n began to appear in Aclit to create Auckland. Bp Aldhune was the first recognised Bishop of Durham.

1021-41AD Bp Eadmund had a house at Auckland.

1071AD William Walcher was appointed bishop by William the Conqueror. He then bought the title Earl of Northumberland and for the first time the religious and aristocratic powers were united in one person who had the ear of the king. It suited successive kings of England to allow the "Prince Bishop" to stay strong to keep out the Scots.

1081AD King William II bestowed powers on Bp William St Carileph, allowing him to raise taxes, mint coins and hold his own parliaments. These made him the second most powerful man in the country.

1128AD The Bishop was accumulating real estate. He had castles at Durham, Bishop Middleham, Stockton, Craike and Norham; manorhouses at Auckland, Evenwood, Darlington, Howden, Welhall, Riccall and Northallerton plus Durham House in London; and parks at Weardale, Auckland, Evenwood and Frankland, Durham. Hunting was extremely important to the Prince Bishops as in England, all deer belonged to the monarch except in the Palatinate of Durham where they belonged to the bishop.

Hunting must have been an extraordinary spectacle. When Bp Ralph Flambard (1099-1128) made his annual foray into Weardale, his main park, the men of Auckland had to build him a temporary hall in the forest. It had to be 60ft by 15ft with a butlery, a chamber, a privy and a chapel which had to be 50ft by 15ft. In return, they were allowed a barrel of leftover beer (more on this in a later blog entry).

1195 Bp Hugh de Puiset (or “Pudsey”) built a hunting lodge at Auckland and a banqueting hall with a minstrels’ gallery, probably on the site of his older property. His 200-strong retinue would go hunting in the park by day and feast by night, sleeping where they fell on the floor of the banqueting hall while he retired to the comfort of the lodge. The hall is now the castle chapel.

1274 Bp Robert de Insula had two monkeys at Auckland "to drive away his cares". After dinner, the Bp held back the older monkey while the younger one was encouraged to stuff its face with almonds. Then the older one was realised. The two monkeys fought, usually resulting in the older one winning. It would then pick the almonds out of the younger monkey's mouth and eat them "amid roars of laughter proceeding from the Bishop and his guests."

1308 Bp Anthony Beck paid Galfrid, the Bailiff of Auckland, £148 to "sumptuously build and incastellate the ancient mannor place of Auckland.

"He built the great Hall, wherein wee divers pillars of black marble speckled with white. He built also the great chamber and many other rooms adjoyning, and erected a goodly chappell there of well-squared stone, and placed in the same a Deane and 12 Prebendaries allotting the quadrant in the west side of the castle, likewise built by him, for their habitation".

1337 In Bp Richard de Bury’s (1333-1345) time, there were wooden bridges over Coundouburn and Eggisclyffburn in Auckland Park. He employed a steward, park-keeper, porter, baker, lardner, chandler, plumber and a glazier, although he only stayed at the castle for five weeks a year as he toured his properties. Bp Bury was renowned for having more books than any bishop in the country and it was impossible to enter his bedroom due to reading matter strewn on the floor.

1346 16,000 English soldiers camped out in Auckland Park before going on to defeat the Scots at the Battle of Neville's Cross.

1349 A £40 stone wall was built around the park, partly to keep in the bishop’s deer, rabbits and rare herd of white cattle, and partly to keep out the local people who might have infected the Bp Thomas Hatfield with the Black Death.

1388 Bp Walter Skirlaw built the castle wing known as Scotland, reputedly because it contained dungeons in which Scottish invaders were imprisoned. It is now offices.

1551 Auckland Castle was raided by three of King Edward VI’s men hoping to find incriminating evidence against Bp Cuthbert Tunstall who opposed the Edward’s anti-Catholic policy.

The raiders - Ra Westmoreland, Henry Combreland, and Thomas Clifford - wrote to Thomas Cromwell, "the Chieff Secretary unto the King's Highness and Master of his Robys", about their adventure: "We went to the Busshops house at Aukland, and came secretly and shortley, so no man knew We marvelled we found so little value - he must have mad all things cler beforehand - only found in money at Aukland £11."

Regardless of their failure to find anything incriminating, the bishop was thrown into the Tower of London. When Mary took to the throne in 1553, the he was allowed out.

1575 Bp James Pilkington died at Auckland Castle and was embalmed by someone "who shewing himself unskilfull therein, left a knyfe within his body, having unfynished that work, by reason whereof one Wylliams of Darnton, being sent for that purpose, soddenly putting his hand into the dead bodie unawares hurt himself upon the said knife".

1617 King James I was so angry with Bp William James that, on May 8, he shouted at him "so roughly and roundly in his own castle of Durham, that he retired to Auckland and died three days afterwards of a violent fit of strangury, brought on by perfect vexation." The king’s records say: "Accidents. Scolded to death: 1. A Bishop."

1634 On June 20, Sir William Brereton was impressed with his visit to Bp Thos Morton at Auckland: "The castle, as it is a stately pleasant seat, of great receipt, so it is of great strength, compassed with a thick stone wall, seated upon the side of a hill, upon a rock, a river running below, and a good store of wood. Here is a very fair, neat hall, two chapels belonging hereto, the one over the other; the higher a most dainty, neat, light, pleasant place, the lower is made use of on Sabbath days. here are three dining rooms, a fair, matted gallery; a dainty stately park, wherein I saw wild bulls and kine."

1640-1647 When Oliver Cromwell's Puritans took over the country, Bp Thomas Morton fled Durham and found safety in Yorkshire where he officially retired - although Cromwell's people reneged on their agreement to pay him a pension and he lived out his days in poverty.

On February 4, 1647, King Charles I visited Bishop Auckland. He had stayed in the castle as young boy in 1604 and as king in 1633, but in 1647, he was a prisoner of Cromwell’s soldiers. Rather than the luxury of the castle, they held him overnight in a room in Christopher Dobson’s inn in Silver Street. A wonderful Royalist lady called Mrs Wren burst into the pub and snapped every soldiers' pipe as the king was complaining that he hated the smell of their smoke. Her resistance didn't assist him: next day, the soldiers resumed their journey to London where he was executed.

1650 Sir Arthur Hazlerigg, Cromwell’s Governor of the North, bought Auckland Castle for 6,102 8s 11d. He employed local Quaker builder John Longstaff, a specialist in recycled stone, to blow up the 350-year-old chapel with gunpowder and reuse the stone in a new mansion.

The chapel actually seems to have been two chapels, one built on top of the other. They were opposite the present chapel, where the screen wall is today. Hazlerigg's mansion seems to have been where the grassed area in front of the chapel is today, although there is great debate about how far he got in constructing it.

1660 Following the Restoration of the monarchy, the restored Bishop of Durham, John Cosin, said that Auckland had been “almost utterly destroyed by the ravenous sacrilege” of Hazlerigg. After trying builder Longstaff for his part in the treason, Cosin employed him to take down Hazlerigg’s house and reuse the stone to turn Pudsey’s banqueting hall into the grand chapel we see today, with a richly-ornamented ceiling 64ft high held up by Frosterley marble columns. On June 5, 1663, plumber Robert Harding was killed in the chapel when stone fell on his head.

At the centre of the chapel, beneath the heavy marble floors, Cosin dug his own vault 8ft deep and reached by 12 steps. He wanted to be the first to be buried in his chapel and was thoroughly miffed to learn that in his absence in London, his grieving daughter had buried her late husband, Mr Davison, in the chapel before him. On May 2, 1671, he angrily wrote to his Auckland steward, Mr Stapylton: "Neither is there any body that I speak withall here but condemne it for a sudden and a rash act to suffer any one to be buryed there before my selfe; but since Mr Davenport (the chaplain) and my daughter, together with your selfe, have thus clapt up the matter, which cannot be now undone againe, I must be content to let it bee as it is, and say, Requiescat in pace."

1752-1771 Bp Richard Trevor – nicknamed “the Beauty of Holiness” - spent up to £16,000 on Auckland (that’s up to £21.5m today). Sir Thomas Robinson of Rokeby designed the gatehouse, which was built by local stonemason William Atkinson. Its central feature is the clock – the castle had had a clock in a tower since 1474 – overlooking the market place.

Next to the gatehouse is the Porter’s Lodge which looks to be Elizabethan, but is probably the 17th Century townhouse of the Crosier family of Redworth. When Bp Trevor bought it, it was a woollen factory.

Jeremiah Dixon of Cockfield laid out the park and built a new bridge over the Gaunless (the keystone says RD 1757, for Richard Dunelm). The central feature of the park is the deerhouse, which cost £379 in 1757. In its tower’s upper room, hunting parties would enjoy supper overlooking the park.

Plus, of course, Bp Trevor is said to have created Europe’s first purpose-built art gallery, extending the Dining Room so that it became long to house his collection of Zurbaran paintings – the paintings the Church Commissioners want to sell.

1791-1826 Bp Shute Barrington embarked upon another extensive, and at the time controversial, restyling of Auckland. He employed architect James Wyatt who redecorated the interior rooms so that they no longer looked like a hotch-potch from across the centuries. He placed pale green and pink glass in the throne room "to make the ladies appear less pale in the bright sunlight" as they queued for their audience with the bishop – the queue of people wishing to press their cases would stretch into the market place.

Outside, Wyatt built the “screen wall” which provides the castle with such an enigmatic approach, and probably also the Great Gates at Park Head.

1826-1836 Sir Walter Scott was a guest at Bp William van Mildert’s dinner at Auckland in honour of the Duke of Wellington in1828. He wrote: "We dined in the old baronial hall, impressive for its rude antiquity, and fortunately free from the plaster of former improvement, as I trust it will long be from the ginger-bread of modern gothicizers. The high moon streaming in through the old Gothic windows contrasted strangely with the artificial lights within; spears, banners, and armour were intermixed with the pictures of old, bishops, and the whole had a single mixture of baronial pomp with the grave and more chastened dignity of prelacy. The conduct of our reverend entertainer suited the character remarkably well. amid the welcome of a Count Palatine he did not for an instant forget the gravity of the church dignitary."

In 1832, Bp van Mildert gave his last castle at Durham to the newly-formed university leaving Auckland his principal residence.

In 1834, his income was £37,000 (£36m in today’s values). The Bishop of Durham was as rich as anyone in the kingdom, living in a sumptuous palace in Auckland. This, though, was the high water mark for the Prince Bishops. When Bp van Mildert died in 1836, his non-religious powers returned, after 850 years, to the Crown.

During those 850 years, though, the Prince Bishops amassed a splendid castle and park at Auckland. As a writer in 1850 said: "Language is too weak, and but few pencils are powerful enough, to delineate the rich scenery of Auckland Park."