Bishop Auckland

From the Bay Horse to the Ale Trail

The Bay Horse sits on Fore Bondgate, and there has been a pub on this spot since 1530, which makes it one of the oldest in County Durham. Inside it is open-plan, built around live music, with a pool table, an open fire kept on after the 2024 refurbishment, and real ale at £2.20 a pint Monday to Wednesday if you catch the board by the bar. You'll usually find Double Maxim, Theakston XB or Timothy Taylor Landlord among the two changing beers and the regular one. Friday is live music, Thursday a speed quiz, Saturday karaoke. One TripAdvisor reviewer calls it "one of the best pubs in Bishop!", and most of the bands, apparently, are "rather brilliant."

That's one pub of many. CAMRA set up a Bishop Auckland Ale Trail linking 11 real-ale pubs around the town centre, and local guides count around 68 pubs, bars and inns across the town and its outlying villages. Caps Off Brewery runs its own taproom out at South Church.

Stan Laurel and the civic heart

Up in the Market Place, the Stanley Jefferson is the Wetherspoon, converted from the Playhouse cinema and variety theatre of 1893. It's named after Arthur Stanley Jefferson, who grew up here while his parents ran the Theatre Royal and later became Stan Laurel. There's a statue of him in town and a Laurel Room in the Town Hall.

The Market Place is the civic heart of it, overlooked by Auckland Tower and the Town Hall, and it fills up each spring for the Bishop Auckland Food Festival — street food, live music, a cookery theatre. Just off it, Newgate Street is the oldest thoroughfare, following the line of the Roman road Dere Street, with the covered Newgate Shopping Centre and its dozen-odd retailers.

The prince-bishops and a cultural revival

Most of what you're here to see belongs to Auckland Castle, official residence of the Bishops of Durham from 1832 until 2012. The bishops were not modest men. A 13th-century steward is on record saying "there are two kings in England, namely the Lord King of England... and the Lord Bishop of Durham," and it took an Act of Parliament in 1836 to disagree. The castle's Deer Park runs to 800 acres — walled garden, woodland, river paths along the Wear, and a Gothic folly called the Deer House built around 1760 as a shelter for the deer and a place for the bishop to eat lunch with a view.

Since 2012, when Jonathan Ruffer bought the castle to keep its twelve Zurbarán paintings in the town, the place has been steadily filling up with things to do: the Mining Art Gallery, the Spanish Gallery, the Faith Museum, and Kynren, an open-air night show staged by 600-odd local volunteers on a seven-and-a-half-acre stage.

Along the Wear to Escomb

Walk out along the Wear and it takes you to Escomb, a mile off, which has one of the most complete Anglo-Saxon churches in the world, built around 670 from Roman stone carted over from the fort at Binchester. The station in town runs roughly hourly to Darlington; the heritage Weardale Railway leaves from alongside it, up the valley to Stanhope.

The amateur cup legacy

Bishop Auckland once sent 100,000 people to watch its amateur footballers win the FA Amateur Cup. The town still keeps the trophies.