Jonathan Ruffer has given the Auckland Project at least £200 million. The Daily Telegraph confirmed the figure in 2025, by which point his investment had transformed a market town the closure of the mines had left behind into a place tourists fly in to see. Bishop Auckland sits at the confluence of the River Wear and the River Gaunless in County Durham, twelve miles northwest of Darlington and twelve southwest of Durham. For nine hundred years it was the favoured residence of the bishops of Durham - the warrior-bishop Antony Bek preferred its hunting grounds to Durham Castle around 1300, and the bishops kept coming back. By 2012 the Church Commissioners could no longer afford the castle. Ruffer bought it.
From 1075 the Bishop of Durham was a Prince-Bishop, with the right to raise armies, mint coins, and levy taxes - a virtually autonomous ruler so long as he stayed loyal to the king, governing the buffer state between England and Scotland. A steward of Bishop Antony Bek in the 13th century said England had two kings: the king and the bishop of Durham. The bishops kept those powers until shortly after William Van Mildert's death in 1836, when the Durham (County Palatine) Act stripped them away. Van Mildert had already given Durham Castle to the new university he was helping found, and Auckland Castle became the bishops' sole episcopal seat in 1832. The town's history grew up around the castle. Bishop William de St-Calais expelled canons from Durham in 1083; some settled here and built a collegiate church. Bishop Langley reorganised that church in 1428. The college and its school were dissolved in the 16th century. In 1604 Anne Swifte petitioned James I to found a new school - the Free Grammar School of King James, ancestor of today's King James I Academy. Bishop Shute Barrington, using £70,000 of lead-mining royalties from Weardale, founded Bishop Barrington School (now Academy) in 1810. The town's third comprehensive, St John's, is Catholic. King James himself stayed at Auckland Castle in 1617; King Charles I made his first visit to England here as a boy in 1604.
Bishop Auckland in 1801 had 1,861 people and almost no trade beyond weaving. The Stockton and Darlington Railway changed it. The original 1825 route ran through West Auckland; Timothy Hackworth built locomotives in neighbouring Shildon. Mining had been recorded here as early as 1183 in the Boldon Book, but the railways made deep mining economic. By 1851 the population was 5,112. By 1900 some 16,000 people worked in the mines around the town. Sixty collieries operated at any one time in the late 19th century. Then it ended. Coal reserves thinned. By the late 1920s unemployment was 27%. The Great Depression pushed it to 60% in 1932, easing to 36% by 1937. The last deep colliery closed in 1968. Drift mines and surface opencast kept going on a smaller scale. The town became known, with the rest of the County Durham coalfield, for charity shops and underemployment - a 2016 community report noted that benefit claim rates ran 25% above the national average. Today the population is around 24,000. The headquarters of dehumidifier manufacturer Ebac is here, employing some 350 people.
When Jonathan Ruffer bought Auckland Castle in 2012, he saved twelve Zurbarán paintings from sale - and accidentally bought a regional regeneration plan. The castle reopened in November 2019 after a multi-million-pound restoration funded partly by the National Lottery. A 35-metre tower visitor centre rose at the gate. The Mining Art Gallery opened in a former bank, telling the story of the very industry that had broken the town. Kynren - a 7.5-acre open-air theatre across the Wear with a cast of 1,000 - stages summer night performances of an epic English history. The Spanish Gallery opened in 2021. The Faith Museum opened in 2023. The 17th-century walled gardens reopened in 2024. In 2015 Historic England designated Bishop Auckland a Heritage Action Zone. A 2019 report named it for £25 million in Towns Fund money. The Auckland Project says it employs locally and aims to keep the regeneration inside the community. The town has the Newton Cap viaduct, 105 feet high, built in 1857 and converted in 1995 to carry the A689 - one of three Grade I listed churches (St Helen, St Anne, St Peter), the Anglo-Saxon church at nearby Escomb (built between 670 and 690 from Roman stones taken from Binchester fort), and Bishop Auckland F.C., who hold the FA Amateur Cup record at 10 wins and helped Manchester United rebuild after the 1958 Munich air disaster by lending them three players. Stan Laurel grew up here. So did the astronomer Jeremiah Dixon, surveyor of the Mason-Dixon Line. The Roman road Dere Street still runs under the modern shopping streets. The market still trades on Thursdays and Saturdays.
Coordinates 54.66N, 1.68W. Bishop Auckland sits at the confluence of the Wear and Gaunless rivers in County Durham, 12 nm northwest of Darlington and 12 nm southwest of Durham. From the air the town is identified by Auckland Castle and its 35-metre Auckland Tower visitor centre at the east edge of the market place, the Newton Cap viaduct (105 ft) across the Wear north of the centre, and the 800-acre Bishop's Park. Best viewed at 1500-3000 ft AGL. Nearest aerodromes: Durham Tees Valley (EGNV) about 13 nm east-southeast, Newcastle (EGNT) about 22 nm northeast. Junction 60 of the A1(M) is about 8 nm east. The Weardale Railway departs west from Bishop Auckland West toward Stanhope.