Ways of Escape: Days out in Durham

An old Durham saying lists the seven things the city is famous for as "Wood, Water and Pleasant Walks, Law and Gospel, Old Maids, and Mustard." Visitors today probably won’t find all of the seven, though the smallest city in Britain still has some of the finest Norman architecture in the world in the UNESCO World Heritage listed Cathedral and Castle as well as the country’s third oldest university, home of the Botanical Gardens and Oriental Museum, the only one of its kind in the UK.

The pleasant walks are still there too. Wander around the compact city centre, full of cobbled streets and historic stone bridges like Elvet and the 12th century Framwellgate, where steps lead down to a riverside path with the best views of the Cathedral, high on a peninsula above the water. All roads lead to the Market Place, built around a Town Hall and Indoor Market both dating from Victorian times, and where you'll find the Gala Theatre and tourist information centre. Other sights include Crook Hall, a medieval manor house, and the ruins of Finchale Priory, once a holiday retreat for Benedictine monks.

Newer additions to the city include the Gala Theatre, a cinema and arts complex built for the Millennium, and the Durham Light Infantry Museum, which commemorates the two hundred year history of the now disbanded regiment.

The city of Durham is also a good base from which to explore the surrounding county. Once the first line of defence against the Scots and one of the heartlands of the Industrial Revolution, the area has a number of castles and industrial heritage museums such as Barnard and Raby castles, the Timothy Hackworth Railway Museum, Beamish, and the Bowes Museum.

Quick Tips:

The Oriental Museum is quite a walk from the city centre. Bus number 6 goes from Durham Station to Bishop Auckland, passing the museum on the way. The route is signposted for pedestrians from Elvet Bridge.

If you’re driving remember that Saddler Street, which runs up to the Cathedral from the Market Place, is a toll road (£2). The charge applies from 10 – 4pm Monday to Saturday.

Newcastle has a better choice of accommodation and nightlife. The train ride between the two cities only takes fifteen minutes, and a day return costs around £5.

Lau’s Buffet King on North Road has cheap Chinese buffet meals. You can get fish and chips at Bimbi’s in the Market Place if you want something more traditional. The tourist information centre is located in the Gala Theatre building, just behind the Market Place. As the castle now houses University College, you can only visit on a guided tour. Check the entrance gate for times and prices.

Best Way To Get Around:

By far the best way to get around the city is on foot. Buses might be an option if you’re going to the Oriental Museum or up the bank back to Durham Station but nothing is further than a fifteen-minute walk from the Cathedral. A shuttle bus connects Durham Station to the Cathedral, passing the Market Place on the way. One-day tickets are 50p. Check the times of the services before you board because they change frequency at certain times of the year.

Durham is on the East Coast main line from London to Edinburgh. The train journey south from Newcastle takes only a quarter of an hour. There are also easy transport links by car – the city is on the A1(M) – and by air, with both Newcastle and Teesside airports less than thirty minutes away.

The Oriental Museum is the only one of its kind in the UK. The museum is located in the grounds of Van Mildert College and covers the civilisations of Asia, the Near East and Islamic North Africa.

The museum building is built on terraces, each level devoted to a different culture. A balcony runs around the top floor, and three smaller rooms lead off to the right of the gift shop at the entrance. The first room is crammed with exhibits on Ancient Egyptians, brought back to Britain by the sixth Duke of Northumberland. The prize exhibits are an obelisk from Oswan, whose counterpart can be found in Cairo Museum, and a five-inch high boxwood sculpture of a servant girl carrying a pot, the detail of which is nothing less than remarkable.

Next-door, The Story of Writing starts with Chinese seals made of bamboo, soapstone, serpentine and igneous rock. Look out for the 18th century Qur'an written on octagonal slips of 2 x 2 inch paper. The tiny manuscript was fitted into the base of a warrior’s weapon and carried into battle.

Out on to the balcony, the Marvels of China are divided into Contemporary Society and Ancient Civilisation, Imperial Decorative Arts, The Emperor and his Court and Exploring the Silk Route.The most famous exhibit is the wood and ivory bed, almost like a room at over two metres across and three metres high, comprised of three walls, a floorboards, a ceiling and a chair between the entrance and the bed itself. The whole structure is joined without using nails or screws meaning it can be dismantled easily.

The terraces below are reached by lift or a series of small staircases. On the highest level, The Islamic World is full of wonderful Persian jugs and bowls dating back to the 13th century,and a wonderful 12th century Sphinx from Syria. The section on Buddhism and Hinduism is even more impressive, with Hindu scriptures, a bronze temple lamp, 17th century bronze Tibetan deity figures and 18th century Burmese panels depicting scenes from thh Ramayana, an epic Sanskrit poem.

Downstairs, Japanese Culture encompasses screens, an 18th century porcelain temple jar, a 14th century cast bronze head of the Buddha, ivory figures, wood-block prints, and 19th century Edo period swords.

The lowest terrace is given over to a wonderful collection of Chinese porcelain. Ming Dynasty blue-and-white pottery blends into Fujian province dishes of turquoise, black and red enamels. In the left hand corner there is also a small display of Korean Goryeo Dynasty green celadon.

Although the Durham Light Infantry Museum attracts far fewer visitors than Durham Cathedral, the history of the regiment is every bit as integral to the city as its ecclesiastical masterpiece. There was also a personal reason for my visit – my grandfather served in the DLI in WWII, and I still remembered the hundreds of whitewashed gravestones I’d seen in South Korea and Sicily.

The local regiment was first raised in 1758, fighting in every major conflict from Wellington’s wars in Portugal and Spain to the U.N. action in Korea. The museum holds a number of exhibits from the early years of the regiment; miniature paintings of Maori chiefs with commanding officers, 18th century cavalry helmets, Boer War equipment, the largest sporting cup in the world – won by the 2nd Battalion football team in India – and Crimean War muskets.

The most evocative sections are on the two world wars. The Great War exhibits line a trench like maze of head high walls, French champagne bottles and war trophies darkening to heavy machine guns and rifles. You can handle many of the exhibits – note the weight of the French, German and British helmets. Extracts from soldiers’ letters home and bronze discs representing each dead soldier add a poignant touch, and a small section aimed at school trips gives an insight into the lives of the soldiers – advised to kill rats by fixing bits of cheese onto their bayonets and cure frostbite by "removing all clothes and rubbing hard with a cloth soaked in water or snow." Over 13,000 men from the regiment, which fought in every major battle, were killed in the war. Thousands more were wounded, gassed or taken prisoner.

A flight of stairs whips straight into WWII. The uniform at the entrance belonged to Richard Annand, the first recipient of the Victoria Cross in the conflict. The Durhams saw action in France and Belgium, at Dunkirk, and later in North Africa, Malta, Sicily, Italy and Burma. Adam Wakenshaw, later awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross, manned the scarred anti-tank gun near the entrance. A German helmet holed by a bullet just above the ear during the campaign in Sicily is exhibited beside a jeep used in the D-Day landings, and there’s a reconstruction of life on the Home Front in a side room. Burma is commemorated by artefacts from the 1944 battle in Kohima in which 900 members of the regiment were killed resisting an eight day long Japanese attack. Captured North Korean equipment and U.N berets cover the final years of the regiment from 1945 to its disbandment in 1968. At the exit there’s a final display of campaign medals encompassing Europe, Persia, India, New Zealand, the Crimea, Egypt, South Africa, Korea, Cyprus and Borneo.

UNESCO listed, hailed as "the best Cathedral on planet earth" by Bill Bryson, and voted the best building in Britain in a BBC poll, Durham Cathedral gets nowhere near the amount of visitors it deserves – all the better for those in the know.

I could tell you about the history of the Cathedral, how the 179 symbols cut into the stonework identify each individual mason’s work, how the foundations are only eighteen inches deep, and how it served as a stronghold for the Prince Bishops. I won’t because you can read about that on a hundred different sites. Instead I’ll tell you why I love this building more than any other I’ve been to in Britain.

It’s easy to lose track of the small things when you’re faced with beauty on such a huge scale. So you’ll stand transfixed by the Rose Window and the Chapel of the Nine Altars and then miss the smaller Millennium Window, whose panes offer a silent eulogy to the region’s moribund glass blowing, coal mining, engineering and shipbuilding industries, the sources of innovation behind Stephenson’s Rocket and the identical bridges over the Tyne and Sydney Harbour.

Look closely at Prior Castell’s Clock in the South Transept. The Scottish thistle on top of the case was probably all that stopped it from being burnt along with all the other wood inside the Cathedral when Cromwell used it as a prison for 3,000 Scottish soldiers. The face has only four marks dividing the time between hours, a relic from when the clock only had one hand and told the time to the nearest quarter hour – obviously before the advent of MTV. The Durham Light Infantry Chapel is just to the left, the regimental colours hanging over a book of remembrance listing over fifteen thousand names from the two world wars. There’s a simple memorial cross that once stood on the Butte de Warlencourt at the Somme in 1916 "In Memory of the Gallant Officers, NCOs and Men of the 6th, 8th and 9th Battalions." The Miner’s Memorial is nearby, paying tribute to those involved in an industry that had 147 mines in County Durham as recently as 1945, and died out in 1993.

My favourite view of the interior is from St. Cuthbert’s Shrine, the banners of Cuthbert and King Oswald hanging over a green marble tomb that was once one of the major pilgrimage sites in the world. Ahead a central circular window surrounded by glorious pointed arches. Away at the opposite end, the Galilee Chapel forms a wonderful counterpoint. Wide, draughty and propped up by rows of limestone arches, it’s a work of architectural genius concealed by the impression of simplicity.

One last thing; though there’s no compulsory entrance fee for the Cathedral, almost £40,000 is needed each week to keep the building and its precincts in order. Dig deep.

Of the five attractions in the Cathedral requiring an entrance fee, one, the exhibit on the Building of the Church, is open only by arrangement, and another, the 325-steps up to The Tower, is often closed due to inclement weather. The two most interesting are the Monks’ Dormitory and the Treasures of Cuthbert exhibition, both of which are located off the cloisters.

The Monk’s Dormitory, in which over a hundred monks once slept, now houses part of the Cathedral library. Its 600-year-old roof is made out of twenty-one oak trees, tie beams spanning the width of the room over arched braces and heavy posts mounted above walls crammed with 19th century bookshelves and thirty thousand books. There are seventy Anglo-Saxon stones sited throughout the room in addition to pre-1066 crosses, two log coffin and capes worn by the Bishop of Durham at the coronation of King Edward VII.

The Treasures of Cuthbert are kept in an atmospheric stone room, near silent and dimly lit. This is the repository of the original 12th century Refuge Door Knocker, a lion’s head, mane radiating out behind, that once hung on the main doors outside and is now the most well-known symbol of the Cathedral. The surrounding glass display cases contain wonderful artefacts such as the 16th century Wolsingham Cross, a handwritten book of sermons preached by Bishop Cosin, who was exiled to Paris along with Charles I after the Civil War, from the late 17th century, the seals of Charles I, Henry VIII and Edward VI, and an 11th century commentary from Bede on Cuthbert’s Book of Revelations.

Among the more memorable exhibits are the two-metre high Neasham Cross, a 12th century bible decorated with gold foliage and the Orbit Roll, a parchment carried around the country to announce the death of an important person. But its Cuthbert’s cross and coffin that really stand out in my mind. The coffin was made out of oak planks cut from a single tree in 698 and represent a unique example of Anglo-Saxon wood carving. The lid is illustrated with Christ on the Day of Judgement, surrounded by apocalyptic beasts, the angel of St Matthew, a calf representing Luke, an eagle for John and St Mark in lion form. Nearby is a woven Byzantine silk found in the tomb; brought from Constantinople, its covered with a map of the entire known world. Though the extent of our geographical knowledge may have improved since then, it would be difficult to top the wonderful craftsmanship of the silk, or indeed of the 7th century oak and silver portable altar also found in the grave.

Despite being one of Northumbria’s least well-known castles, Bowes has a history full of legend and intrigue. Initially built by the Romans to guard the strategic Stanmore Pass over the Pennines, it was later rebuilt by the Norman Count of Brittany and Henry II, besieged by Robert the Bruce, and is still haunted by a garrison of massacred Roman soldiers who return every year to bury looted treasure.

Although the castle was allowed to fall into disrepair in the 14th century, the fifty metre high stone keep built by Henry still survives, bordered on two sides by the dry remains of an inner moat. The remains rise out of the grass on the edge of Bowes Village like a rotting molar tooth, honeycombed and cracked at the top with huge arches and ragged holes further down where the stone has been stripped and eroded. Inside, a few plaques mark features long since disappeared and a staircase in the corner gives a higher view of the fields and stone houses roundabouts. With no facilities inside the cold castle walls a few walkers sit on the grass outside having a picnic. Ten minutes was long enough to see everything, though we spent a lot longer in the local pub.

Just off the A66, and on bus routes from both Barnard Castle and Darlington, Bowes is not somewhere most people would choose to visit of its own account, in spite of the pretty main street and a parish church once visited by Charles Dickens. But it’s still a lovely spot, free to visit, and within a close enough proximity to Barnard Castle, Teesdale and the Pennine Way to make a rewarding stop over if you’re in the area. Just be careful of the ghosts.