See Durham > Bishop Auckland > History of Bishop Auckland
Toponymy
The first part of the name, “Bishop”, refers to the land being owned by and the town being the residence of the Bishop of Durham. However, the derivation of “Auckland” is less clear. One suggestion is that it is derived from “Alclit”, “Alcluith” or “Alcleat”. This is similar to Alclut or Alclyde, an early name for Dumbarton, which means “rock on the Clyde” or “cliff on the Clyde”. It is believed that Clyde may have been an earlier Celtic name for the river today known as the Gaunless, which flows close to the town. Auckland is also used in the settlements of St Helen Auckland, West Auckland and St Andrew Auckland, an old name for South Church, all of which are along the path of the Gaunless. The name Gaunless itself is of later Norse origin, meaning useless. It is believed that this derives from the river’s inability to power a mill, sustain fish or create fertile floodplains.
A second suggestion is that Auckland derives from the Norse Aukland meaning additional land. This could refer to the area being extra land granted to the Bishop of Durham by King Canute in around 1020. A further suggestion is that Auckland derives from “Oakland”, referring to the presence of forests.
Earliest history
The earliest known reference to Bishop Auckland itself is around 1000AD as land given to the Duke of Northumberland for defending the church against the Scots. It is also mentioned in 1020 as a gift given to the Bishop of Durham by King Canute. However, a village almost certainly existed on the town’s present site long before this, with there being evidence of church on the site of St Andrew’s Church in South Church as early as the seventh century. Furthermore, the Romans had a look-out post where Auckland Castle is sited today and a 10 acre (0.04 km²) fort at nearby Binchester. There is also evidence of possible Iron Age settlements around the town, together with finds of Bronze Age, Neolithic and Mesolithic artefacts.
The Bishops of Durham
Much of the town’s history surrounds its links with the Bishops of Durham. In 1083, Bishop William de St-Calais expelled a number of canons from Durham. Some of these settled in the area and established a collegiate church. Around 1183 Bishop Pudsey established a manor house in the town, with a great hall being completed in 1195 on the site occupied by St Peter’s Chapel today. Bishop Bek, who preferred the town as his main residence over Durham Castle due to its proximity to hunting grounds, later converted the manor house into a castle. The grounds of the castle were noted as being large enough to contain 16000 men ahead of the Battle of Neville’s Cross in 1346.
Between 1283 and 1310, Bek was also responsible for ordering the replacement of the collegiate church established in 1183 with the Church of St Andrew that stands in South Church today, together with accommodation for the canons; the building known today as the East Deanery.
The collegiate church also appears to have supported a school. The collegiate church was re-organised under Bishop Langley in 1428 and at some point in the same century moved to the castle grounds. The college and its school were finally dissolved in the 15th century.
The school was not revived until the reign of King James I when in 1604 Anne Swifte petitioned the King to found a school and the Free Grammar School of King James, the direct descendant of today’s King James I school, was established. Although, the school’s early location is unknown, in 1638 Bishop Morton granted the school space in an old chapel in the Market Place.
Also in 1604, James’s son, the future King Charles I made the first of three visits he would make to the town during his life. On this visit, his first to England, he was entertained by Bishop Matthew. James himself stayed in Auckland Castle between 17 and 19 April 1617. Later, on 8 May, at Durham Castle King James is reputed to have rebuked Bishop William James so badly that the Bishop returned to Auckland Castle and died three days later.
Charles’s second visit to the town was on his way to Scotland on 31 May 1633, when he was entertained by Bishop Morton. His third visit on 4 February 1647 was in less lavish circumstances, as a prisoner. Morton had fled the town in 1640 and the castle was empty. Consequently, the king had to stay in a public house off the Market Place owned by Christopher Dobson.
St Peter’s chapel. Originally the castle’s great hall, it was converted to a chapel after the restoration of the monarchy.After the dis-establishment of the Church of England, at the end of the first civil war, Auckland Castle was sold to Sir Arthur Hazelrig, who demolished much of the castle, including the chapel, and built a mansion. After the restoration of the monarchy, the new Bishop of Durham, John Cosin, in turn demolished Hazelrig’s mansion and rebuilt the castle converting the banqueting hall into the chapel that stands today.
Industrial Revolution
By 1801, the town had a population of 1861. At the end of the eighteenth century the town had no notable roads other than the Roman road and little trade beyond weaving. Although, coal mining existed on a small-scale and had existed as early as 1183 when it is mentioned in the Boldon Book, it was limited by the lack of an easy way to transport coal away from the area. All this changed with the arrival railways in the early nineteenth century, which allowed large scale coal mining. The railways allowed coal to be mined, and then transported to the coast before being put onto ships to London and even abroad.
Around the same time, the Bishop, Shute Barrington was a keen proponent of the use of education to improve the social and moral circumstances of the lower social classes. He used £70,000 received from lead mining royalties in Weardale to fund the establishment of a number of schools in the area. One of these schools was the Bishop Barrington School, one of the town’s three comprehensive schools today. The Bishop Barrington School opened on 26 May 1810, the Bishop’s own birthday. The school even allowed girls to attend until the age of 11 years. Barrington’s support of education for the poor was not without controversy. Some suggested education of the poor would lead people to question their position in society, others even blamed it for the French Revolution.
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Barrington’s successor, William van Mildert was involved in the creation of Durham University. Durham Castle was donated to the new university and Auckland Castle, usually the preferred residence by successive Bishops, became the Bishop of Durham’s official residence in 1832. However, the influence of the Prince Bishops of Durham was on the wane and there was pressure for reform. Van Mildert would be the last Prince Bishop. Shortly after his death, in 1836, the position was stripped of its ancient powers and wealth.
By 1851 the population of the town had more than doubled to 5112. A great proportion of the population working in ironworks and collieries. By 1891, the population had doubled again. In the second half of the nineteenth century there were typically around 60 collieries in the area open at any one time. By the turn of the twentieth century 16,000 people were employed in the mining industry in the area.
The town also became an important centre for rail, with large amounts of minerals such as coal, limestone and ironstone mined in the surrounding area passing through the town on the way to the coast. In the neighbouring town of Shildon large numbers were employed in the railways, were a railway engine works were established.
Industrial decline
By the early years of the twentieth century coal mining started to go into decline as coal reserves started to become exhausted. By the end of the 1920s unemployment had hit 27% and the population too had started to decline, as colliery employment had halved compared with ten years previously. With the onset of the Great Depression unemployment rose to 60% in 1932 before easing back to 36% in 1937. The Second World War offered a temporary reprieve for the coal industry, however, after the war the decline continued. The last deep colliery in the area closed in 1968, although the much more mechanised, and less labour intensive, surface level opencast mining did continue.
Equally, the railways that had also supported the area were also scaled back, ultimately culminating in the closure of Shildon’s Wagon works in 1984 which resulted in the loss of thousands of jobs.