A look inside East Deanery, Durham's oldest private house

It was built in 1292 and famously features a spiral staircase that goes the wrong way round.

East Deanery, South Church, which is County Durham's oldest private residence, is on the market for £650,000. Picture: H&H Land & Estates

It is East Deanery at South Church, and the estate agent’s write-up talks of its Tudor arched doors, its 16th Century stone mullion windows and how the treads on its spiral staircase are reused medieval grave covers.

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Although in recent decades, it has been rescued from utter dereliction and became a restaurant, in its current guise, it is a private six-bedroomed home and anyone interested in it is asked to approach the agents.

Inside East Deanery. Picture: H&H Land & Estates

The new owner will get a 731-year-old property with 940 years of history that begins in 1083 when Bishop William de St Calais had a clear-out at the cathedral.

The cathedral had been looked after by “clerks of St Cuthbert”, who were old-fashioned monks – “secular canons”, in the jargon – with wives and children. The new bishop wanted a monastic cathedral, staffed by celibate Benedictine monks.

And so he fired the secular canons, and sent them off with their families to live in Darlington, Norton-on-Tees and Auckland St Andrew to the south of Bishop Auckland. It is as if he deliberately sent them to places where pilgrims would have stopped for their final night before reaching the shrine of St Cuthbert in Durham – perhaps the canons’ new role was to provide hospitality for the travellers and to do some PR for the great saint by carrying his message into the community.

Inside East Deanery. Picture: H&H Land & Estates

Those who arrived at Auckland St Andrew found a small, Saxon church built around 650AD on a piece of high ground within a loop of the River Gaunless. They enlarged it and it became a “collegiate church” – nothing to do with education but so called because it was run by a college of canons, headed by a dean, who led a secular rather than monastic way of life.

But they probably didn’t live there. In fact, few people did – because of the river.

A directory in 1894 noted: “The Gaunless sometimes overflows its banks at this village, and causes considerable damage."

An Edwardian postcard of South Church, with the Gaunless in the foreground and St Andrew's Church behind. This picture must have been taken from near the Deanery on the south bank of the Gaunless

In 1292, Bishop Antony Bek gave the canons new land to the south of the river above the floodline to ensure they could live there. It was on this land that they built the deanery. It was a stronghold of a building, constructed to withstand the rampaging Scots – although, unusually and surprisingly, it includes an anti-clockwise spiral staircase which makes it harder for right-handed defenders to wield their swords.

The spiral staircase in East Deanery seems to make it harder for a right-handed defender

There was a dean, 12 canons and 12 prebends associated with the deanery and they came to own farmland from Evenwood Gate to Spennymoor. With their wealth, they rebuilt St Andrew’s so that it became the largest parish church in the diocese of Durham, and, supposedly, they dug a tunnel from the deanery and under the Gaunless so they could pop up in the pulpit. This doesn’t appear on the estate agent’s description so perhaps it is still waiting to be rediscovered.

Inside East Deanery. Picture: H&H Land & Estates

In 1428, the clerics from the deanery moved into Castle Square outside the entrance to Auckland Castle, to be closer to the bishop, leaving the dean in Auckland St Andrew.

During the Reformation of the 1540s, Henry VIII confiscated religious properties and their wealth. He kept their wealth and gave the properties to his supporters. Sir Hugh Ascne was given the deanery, which ceased to be a religious building and became forgotten as a farmhouse. Indeed, when the farm was split up, it became known as East Deanery.

Even the neighbouring Dean Valley, which includes settlements like Eldon and Close House, forgot its connection to the deanery and so is now called Dene Valley.

South Church in 1959

At the start of the 19th Century, the mining community of South Church grew up on the low ground around St Andrew’s Church, and its terraces and pubs made the deanery less appealing to the upper classes and it gradually fell down.

The Deanery, South Church, near Bishop Auckland abandoned in May 1976

In the 1960s it was abandoned and vandalised, until Alan Trelford, a product designer at Glaxo and Black & Decker, spent eight years restoring it. He left in 1984, and in the 1990s, the deanery briefly became a restaurant.

It has since been lovingly converted into a very comfortable home which has the longest history of any private residence in the whole county.

The Deanery, South Church, which is County Durham's oldest private residence, is on the market for £650,000. Picture: H&H Land & Estates

For more information about East Deanery or to arrange a viewing, please get in touch with H&H Land & Estates on 0191 370 8530 or at durham@hhlandestates.co.uk.

Inside East Deanery. Picture: H&H Land & Estates

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