Q: WHAT are the connections between Bowes village and the Queen Mother? - W Sewell, Bishop Auckland.

A: BOWES village lies on the River Greta, three miles south-west of Barnard Castle. This village takes its name from an Anglo-Saxon or Viking word Bogr meaning bow signifying river bend and early records of the name include Bogis and Boghas.

The Bowes family takes its name from the village. The Bowes family are sometimes thought to be descended from Alan the Black, Earl of Richmond, who served William the Conqueror. In the early 1300s a descendant called Sir Adam Bowes, Bailiff of Richmond, inherited Streatlam Castle in Durham through marriage and this became the Bowes family seat. Streatlam Castle no longer exists, but was about three miles east of Barnard Castle. Later members of the Bowes family included Sir William Bowes (1389-1465), a governor of Berwick; Sir Robert Bowes 1495-1554, who was Master of the Rolls; and Sir Ralph Bowes who fought against the Scots at Flodden Field in 1513. Another Durham-based member of the family called George Bowes was a chief opponent of the Percys and Nevilles when they plotted against Queen Elizabeth I in the 1569 Rising of the North.

Streatlam was a Bowes family seat for many years and one member of the Streatlam branch of the family was Sir William Bowes who married Elizabeth Blakiston, heiress of Gibside near Gateshead, in 1691. It was William Bowes' great granddaughter, Mary Eleanor Bowes (1749-1800), who married John Lyon, the ninth Earl of Strathmore, in 1767. Mary Eleanor was an only child and the last remaining member of the Streatlam branch of the Bowes family. For the preservation of the Bowes name, she and her family combined the Bowes and Lyon surnames after her marriage to the Earl. The children of Mary Eleanor Bowes and John Lyon included two sons. The eldest son was John Lyon-Bowes (born 1769) and the younger was Thomas Lyon Bowes (born 1773). John Lyon Bowes became the tenth Earl of Strathmore upon his father's death in 1776. This tenth earl had a son, also called John, but he was born illegitimately and did not become the eleventh earl. John Bowes did, however, inherit his father's Teesdale estates and achieved later fame as the joint founder of the Bowes Museum with his French wife, Josephine. Thomas Lyon-Bowes' sons included Claude Bowes-Lyon (born 1824), grandfather of Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes Lyon, better known to us as the present Queen Mother.

Q: I HAVE a medallion which belonged to my father which has engraved on the reverse, Shildon's Nursing Gala 1910. Could you supply any information about this event? - D Ewbank, Shildon.

A: I AM stumped by this one. Perhaps readers can help?

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