AUCKLAND CASTLE, TOWER AND FAITH MUSEUM WINS AT THE RIBA NORTH EAST AWARDS
MAY 2024
The Auckland Castle, Tower and Faith Museum has won the North East Building of the Year and North East Conservation Award in collaboration with Purcell.
The project comprises a number of urban and historic interventions: the restoration of the 900-year-old Grade I listed Castle, once home to the Prince Bishops; the Auckland Tower at the key nodal point between the historic Market Place and the entrance to the Castle complex; and the new extension to Castle’s Scotland Wing to accommodate the Faith Museum, which opened in 2023. The project seeks to preserve the Castle’s heritage, promote Bishop Auckland as a visitor destination and initiate regeneration of the town.
CRAFTLINES
AUGUST 2015
My grandfather has worn many hats; soldier, civil servant, father of seven, husband, and winner of a county final in hurling (the achievement of which he is potentially most proud). He is fluent in Irish and recalls event and dates from 50 years ago with a staggering accuracy. Yet the residing image of him from my childhood is as a craftsman – in the garage next to his house in Dublin, whittling and sanding a piece of ash to form a hurley, sizing it precisely for the user, wrapping the handle to create the perfect hold. I remember sitting, playing surreptitiously with a clamp, watching this in awe: the creation of the perfect instrument from a piece of timber; a skill honed through practice and an unfailing attention to detail. I marvelled at the assurance of it all, the promise in his hands.
It would be satisfyingly simple to attribute my choice of career to these moments – to claim there was an epiphany in watching him, a sudden realisation that I wanted to be an architect, to create. In reality, however, the path was not so linear; instead the conviction that I wanted to become an architect embedded itself in my consciousness slowly, over time. The memory of him working in his garage was one I didn’t return to often, and like any story we fail to repeatedly tell ourselves, it languished, dormant, in the recesses of my mind.
I recently went to site at Jesus College, Cambridge, where we are working on a project that is part new build, part refurbishment. An aspect of the refurbishment involves the adaptation of eight bookcases in the magnificent former library into wall panelling. The existing bookcases are a dark stained timber, designed by Maurice Webb in the 1920s and wonderfully crafted by a masterful hand. Reworking these without compromising their beauty would be a challenge for any craftsman.
On seeing the work the joiner had done, I realised there was no cause for worry – it had been executed with confident, competent hands. In that moment, the memory of my grandfather in his garage came back to me in glorious Technicolor; and I felt a familiar thrill at the embodied potential of the right material in the hands of a craftsman, with promise in his hands.