Skip to main content

The Auckland Project

Being retired seem to be a full time occupation - I have no idea how I had time to have a job - of course there are some disadvantages - loss of income but compensated by late mornings and no rush hour traffic. 

I am however, prone to losing sense of time and routine so I have to have a few bits in my week that remind me to get up at a sensible hour - and believe me whats sensible to me is very late to most people - and to keep track of what day is what.

One my forays in to time management is a stint volunteering at The Auckland Project (TAP) - I started out invigilating in the Spanish Gallery in the market Square of Bishop Auckland but soon decided that for various reason I preferred to chat with visitors about the Castle - also known as the Bishops Palace.  


Bishop Auckland was the home of the Prince Bishops - a long convoluted piece of history which warrants further investigation, but essentially in about 1066 the king couldn't quite control the north from the deep south and instead of totally ignoring it like nowadays, he gave special powers to the church allowing the Bishop of Durham to have a lot of rights previously unknown- this made the Bishop very powerful - own armies - own penal system, own coins minted, but for the purpose of this story they had their own rather beautiful Palace and grounds to live in.  


Most of the power was recalled in the mid 1800's but the Bishop of Durham continues to be a powerful  representative of the church and also continued to live in the 'castle' as it in known locally right up until 2012.  Now the building is part of TAP and open to visitors 5 days a week.  The whole place is steeped
in history and interesting stories.



The story of TAP is another interesting story - Google it - for it more info - it saved the famous Zurbaran paintings from leaving the town - restored the palace to some former glory and for me it presents an opportunity to volunteer locally, learn some history and meet some local people.  Its a bit of a talking point locally - and there are, as always, two sides to every story - but the North East continues to suffer neglect from central government in spite of 'leveling up' policies so any venture that promoted this interesting town and local area has to be welcomed. 

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Scotland part 2

The second half of the week continued in much the same vein.  We had one rainy afternoon which was actually quite nice to be holed up in the house with the rain lashing the windows.  It probably wasn't quite so nice for the two visitors that came on their bikes but they're tough cookies - and its only water- but I did feel sorry for them having to cycle six miles back down the track in the wind and rain, but given Scotland,  it wasn't as bad as it could be. The big quest for the 2nd half of the week was to find some deer antiers!  The chap that owned the house dropped in to visit - he was a very friendly fella and was chatting about how this was the time of year when all the Stags lost their antlers (he collected them and sold them) so after that we were on the serious lookout.   It's always been Fred's mission to find some dropped antlers....  The Monro baggers continued with the mission to bag the remaining three Monros... there is discussion as whet...
Post a Comment
Read more

Vigo

We left the ship to explore Vigo. Its a much larger place then we expected... although tbh I hadn't given ut a lot of thought. Its a real mish mash of old and new and having got a map from tourist info we decided to follow the walking trail to the Monte Castro... the highest point of the town.  Most of the town was pretty much as everywhere else... lots of traffic... lots of people... one or two interesting buildings and a lot of shopping. We headed to the art gallery - this has been a year of gallery visits so we we seen o reason to change now.  The Museo de Marco is housed in the towns ex prison building and its very grand. In fact, I think that on this occaision the building might have been more interesting than the art....  Although the visiting exhibition by Susanne S D Themlitz was strangely compelling. It was a huge varied collection of eclectic items... found, salavaged, manipulated and arranged in lots of ways - weirdly inspiring - and mostly enjoyable to look at...
2 comments
Read more

Funchal

So after three days at sea we finally hit Funchal in Madeira.  An escape from the ship, and I have to say it was very pleasant indeed.  First of all the weather is really splendid.  Especially when you know that everybody else in the UK is suffering grim storms and vile winds..  Over here it is between 22 and 25 degrees is really quite warm.    Funchal is a pretty city. It's built on a hill it with lots of lovely white houses with stunning red roofs.   In order to get the best of it we walked along the sea front until we got to the cable car and we took it up the hill.  It was a really good ride much longer than we imagined and it's quite weird because it goes right through the town -  completely over everybody's house...  So not only do you get a lovely vista of the bay but you can view the beautiful rooftops and get to look in everybody's gardens and to look at their picnic sets.. clean washing nice plants... scratty b...
2 comments
Read more