A bishop so angry he pulled down a stately home

A fanciful story – but completely true.

And the story of Binchester Hall itself is even more fanciful. It features a bishop so angry that he persuaded Parliament to allow him to buy a stately home and demolish it!

We’ve pieced the story together with the help of contemporary local historians Tom Hutchinson and Barbara Laurie, and with much assistance from Matthew Richley, who published his history of the town in 1872.

The Binchester estate belonged to the Wren family from about 1570. There were many branches of Wrens, whose most famous member was Sir Christopher, the architect of St Paul’s Cathedral, which was completed in 1711.

He is said to have designed a hall for the Durham branch of the Wrens, nestling it close to the Roman fort and perching it beside “a delightful terrace, commanding a view of the picturesque vale of the Wear”.

It was in this hall that Farrer Wren sat, surrounded by suits of old armour and his collection of antiquities, waiting to see the flags being waved with news of how his birds had gone on in the cockpit behind the inn in Fore Bondgate.

Farrer’s daughter, Mary, married the Honourable Thomas Lyon, who pulled the hall down and replaced it with a “most beautiful and modern” mansion surrounded by “hanging plantations”.

Their son, Charles, sunk much of the family fortune into unsuccessful coalmining ventures, causing family disputes, family bankruptcy and a big falling out with his neighbour, the Bishop of Durham.

In the 1820s, Charles tried to sink a pit at Flatts Farm, in the middle of a large loop of the Wear beneath Auckland Castle.

Bishop William van Mildert (above) looked out of his castle window and was greatly annoyed by the ugly, industrial sight.

So greatly annoyed was he that he decided to buy the Binchester estate so he could prevent any coalmine from spoiling his view.

However, to raise the necessary money, he had to sell some church property, which required Parliamentary permission. Lord Shaftesbury opposed the Bill, and Lord Eldon spoke in its favour, and in 1828 van Mildert was given permission to spend £54,534 – at least £5m in today’s values – buying Binchester.

But having banked the Bishop’s money, Charles Lyon refused to leave Binchester Hall, claiming “unfair treatment”.

After three years, Charles eventually departed, apparently taking with him a large ornate fireplace – it is now in the Castle of Mey in Caithness which was the favourite residence of Elizabeth Bowes Lyon, the Queen Mother and member of Charles’ family.

The Bishop probably didn’t mind the felony of a fireplace. He wanted the whole hall razed to the ground so he could look out of his castle with an interrupted view. He arranged for its demolition to begin one day in 1833.

“On the Sunday previous to the commencement of the pulling down of the Hall,” said Victorian historian Matthew Richley, “it was thrown open to the public, when it was literally overrun with people, who speedily commenced the work of spoliation by breaking off ornaments from the chimney-pieces and cornices, and carrying them away as remembrancers of the old place.”

Then the wrecking crew moved in, and the Hall was soon down. A large quantity of timber and stone was carted away by Mr West, to help with his construction of the Bishop Auckland gasworks, and some of the remainder was used to create a couple of farmhouses.

“And now,” said Richley in 1872, “the lofty hill, which was once a stronghold of the Romans, and on the summit of which in more modern times stood Binchester Hall, is occupied by a humble farmstead.”

Just to confuse matters, the farm buildings are called Binchester Hall and Binchester Hall Farm.

There obviously had been quite a bit of mining in the area because in the 1880s, Bolckow Vaughan, the mineowning company, rented the farm so its managers could live there. This enabled the company to avoid paying compensation to the inhabitants of the farm for subsidence caused by colliery activity.

In the 1960s, Binchester Hall (above) became a two-star hotel. It had an 80-seat restaurant and its cellar bar was for a while renowned as a nightclub. In the 1980s, the hotel became a care home which closed in 2002, and has stood empty ever since, rather blighting the experience of a visitor to the nearby Roman fort.

However, in the last year, the hall and the farm have been bought from the Church Commissioners by the Auckland Castle Trust.

The trust already owns the former Eleven Arches Golf Course where Mr Lyon planned to sink the coalmine that so infuriated the bishop. The trust doesn’t plan any mining on the site, but is proposing to create a heritage theme park within the large loop of the Wear. It is a very exciting project, but Bishop van Mildert probably wouldn’t approve.

IN St Andrew’s churchyard in Aycliffe Village, there is a headstone (above) which takes us back to the days of disagreement between the bishop and Charles Lyon.

The headstone is hard by another one and so difficult to see, but Geoff Carr of Aycliffe has managed to decipher it.

It says: “Sacred to the memory of Thomas Liddle who died Aug. 30th 1825 aged 85 yrs., who lived many years in the family of Farrow Wren Esq. and with the Hon. Thomas Lyon. This stone is erected by Charles Lyon of Binchester in memory of a faithful and valuable servant.”

The Farrow Wren is the same as the Farrer Wren who is said to have sat in his hall waiting for the cock-fighting results – they were not so pernickety about precise spelling in those days.

The Honourable Thomas Lyon (1741-96) was born in Hetton House in Hetton-le-Hole, and was MP for Forfarshire in Scotland in the 1770s. He was the younger brother of John Lyon, the 9th Earl of Strathmore, who owned the great County Durham estate of Gibside and much of Teesdale. John Lyon’s widow, Mary Eleanor, is more famous still – she has been nicknamed “the unhappy countess” and her second husband, Andrew Robinson Stoney, is known as “the worst husband in Georgian England” due to the appalling way he ill-treated her.

And Charles Lyon was Thomas’ son. He was the one who angered the bishop.

So Thomas Liddle, who was probably born in Brafferton which is why he is buried in Aycliffe, served three generations of Binchester Hall nobility.

“It is unusual because even a century after Thomas was buried, ordinary working folk could not afford headstones,” says Geoff. “This one, though, was paid for by his grateful employer. They must have though an awful lot of him at Binchester.”

CLICK HERE for the original stories on the Shepherd's Inn, Bishop Auckland

BISHOP William van Mildert is the last of the Prince Bishops of Durham. He was the son of a London gin distiller who became the leading Conservative theologian of his day.

He became Bishop of Durham in 1826, and spent much of his time up here building churches, schools and parsonages.

In the House of Lords, though, he spent his time standing against progress – in 1828 he was against religious freedom for Catholics and in 1831 he was against Parliamentary reform which would widen the franchise. The people of Bishop Auckland were so angered by his opposition that they burned his effigy outside the gates to Auckland Castle.

Van Mildert feared that they were planning “personal violence” against him, and that they might “knock me on the head”.

The Aucklanders, though, were mild in their reaction. He wrote that “had I passed through Darlington, I was to have been waylaid and personally maltreated”.

At the same time, van Mildert was the driving force behind the creation of Durham University. He personally gave £2,000 for its foundation (his income, though, was £37,000-a-year) and his residence of Durham Castle for it to use.

He died at Auckland Castle on February 21, 1836, and was entombed in front of the high altar in Durham Cathedral.

Shortly after his death, Durham was stripped of its palatine status, and the bishop lost his powers as a local ruler and some of his wealth.