Qualla: Auckland Castle

Auckland Castle: Introduction

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pit-yacker, CC BY-SA 3.0. Jonathan Ruffer wrote a £15 million cheque in 2011 to stop the Church Commissioners from selling twelve paintings. The pictures - Jacob and his twelve sons by the 17th-century Spaniard Francisco de Zurbarán - had hung in the Long Dining Room at Auckland Castle since Bishop Richard Trevor bought them at auction in 1756. The Church had voted in 2001 to sell. Ruffer, an investment manager and philanthropist, intervened. The following year he bought the entire castle and its contents. By 2019, after a multi-million-pound restoration, the home of the Prince Bishops of Durham reopened to the public as the Auckland Project, with the twelve Zurbaráns back where they belonged.

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Image: Pit-yacker | CC BY-SA 3.0

Auckland Castle: Eight Hundred Years of Bishops

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pit-yacker, CC BY 2.5. The site occupies flat ground above the confluence of the River Gaunless and River Wear, the land falling steeply on three sides. The bishops of Durham have used it since around 1183. After the disestablishment of the Church of England at the end of the First English Civil War in...

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Image: Pit-yacker | CC BY 2.5

Auckland Castle: Jacob and His Twelve Sons

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit pit-yacker from UK, CC BY-SA 2.0. Bishop Trevor bought twelve of Zurbarán's thirteen portraits at auction in 1756 through the dealer James Mendez. The paintings may have been intended originally for South America - the genealogy of the twelve tribes of Israel was popular subject matter in colonial Spanish churche...

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Image: pit-yacker from UK | CC BY-SA 2.0

Auckland Castle: The Auckland Project

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dan892k9, Public domain. Ruffer's intervention turned into a regional regeneration project. By the 2019 opening day a new 35-metre tower had risen as a visitor centre, with a lift, a staircase and balconies for views down on the castle and parkland. Fourteen restored rooms now tell the story of fourteen ...

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Image: Dan892k9 | Public domain