Fiona Hill, Chancellor of Durham University, visited Barnard Castle last month to unveil the Windows for the King at St Mary’s Parish Church. Here is an extract of what she said, including a fond memory of a week’s work experience at the Mercury…
When I was at school in Bishop Auckland, geography and history lessons began with facts about your hometown and then moved to the rest of the UK and beyond. People in the north east were fiercely aware of who they were and where they were from.
As a child I was fascinated by Richard III. He always seemed to pop up in school plays and at one point, my mother cut my hair into a Richard III hairstyle. I used to cycle over here on my bike to visit the castle and the town. I was very proud of living close by to such a remarkable place.
Richard’s reign was as we all know a watershed in English history. His life and times are emblematic of a gruesome span of historical events.
The north east has long been a frontier, a militarized zone, a realm of hard men and tough women. In Bishop Auckland, Roman legions built a fort Vinovium on the hill above the River Wear that runs north of the town on its way to the city of Durham. It was one of the largest in a chain that ended at Hadrian’s Wall.
It was also part of the territory ruled by Cartimandua, the first century queen of the north, one of the region’s toughest women. Even if she was not as well known as Boadicea, the contemporary leader of the Iceni tribe in the south of England, Cartimandua seemed to have continually outsmarted the Romans and lived to fight another day.
The North East has had some other female luminaries. St Hilda, the Anglo Saxon founder of Whitby Abbey who was a major figure in the early Christian Church and patron of Caedmon, the earliest English poet. She is immortalised in the ecclesiastical history of England, written by the Venerable Bede, the Benedictine monk from Jarrow who is buried in Durham Cathedral.
Hilda and Bede were key figures in the so called dark ages when the north east was actually one of the most important centres of ecclesiastical learning. The north east produced the first illuminated manuscripts and translations of the gospels into English.
Much of the north was eventually ruled by the Bishop of Durham, a powerful prince not just a clergyman, charged by the King or Queen with raising his own army to fend off the Scots and anyone else who might come along. Barnard Castle is part of this legacy – one of the bastions of the north dating back to 11th century as a fortification.
In addition to Richard III is is linked to the famous Balliol family, the Kings of Scotland and was taken over by the Bishop of Durham who briefly acquired the castle in the 1290s.
Other famous local landowners included the Percys and the Nevilles. Between them, they made and broke kings and queens of England.
Richard was a Neville on his maternal side, a Lord of the North. He acquired Barnard Castle through his marriage to Anne Neville and it was his favourite residence – sadly it fell into ruins after he died.
He planned a college in the town to promote education and learning. It could have been the precursor to Durham University which was not established until centuries later… but this was not to be.
Richard III’s reign may have been brief, but his reputation was formidable.
Besides being able to relate all this, I cannot claim a direct relationship to Richard III but I do have relatives with links to this church, St Mary’s and the Nevilles. My cousin Elizabeth married a classmate from Durham University, Peter Fisher.
He is the nephew of the Archbishop of Canterbury who crowned Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. Peter’s father was a canon at St George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle, the chapel of the royal family. Elizabeth and Peter live in Bowes and are here today.
Queen Elizabeth was a direct descendant of Cecily Neville and thus a relative of Richard III. And, of course, the family of the Queen’s mother, the Bowes-Lyons have deep roots in Bowes and Barnard Castle.
All of this rendition of family, history and connections is part of County Durham and the north east’s fascinating legacy. It is my great pleasure to help St Mary’s Church shed light on it all by celebrting the remarkable life of a son of the north through these beautiful windows which depict saints significant to Richard III and the town of Barnard Castle.
