Dickens of a tale… (From Living Northeast)

Dickens of a tale…

1:25pm Monday 16th August 2010 in

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As Bowes Hall goes on the market for £1m, Ruth Addicott talks to owner Ann Marie Robinson and finds out more about its fascinating history.

STROLLING around Bowes Hall, it is hard to imagine the scenes of chaos that took place when it was boys’ school in the early 19th Century.

Look closely at the window seats in the dressing room on the first floor, however, and the boys have clearly left their mark with a handful of small inscriptions dating back to 1821.

The history behind the imposing Grade II-listed mansion was one thing that appealed to owner Ann Marie Robinson when she moved in eight years ago with her husband Michael and sons Matthew and Christopher, now 18 and 16.

They were looking for somewhere spacious within close proximity to the A66 and Barnard Castle School.

Complete with nine bedrooms, five reception rooms and surrounded by countryside and scenic walks, Bowes Hall, in Bowes village, was perfect.

The school bus stopped right outside the garden gate, the grounds meant Ann Marie could indulge her passion for gardening and the annexe on the third floor provided a sound-proof base for the boys to practise with their punk band.

“We drove up on a wet and windy Bowes day and looked at it and said, god, it’s huge,” recalls Ann Marie.

“It looked a bit like a National Trust property at first, but we felt it had a presence and could see a way of making it into a family home.”

The centre-piece is the reception hall with its original limestone floor, two stone columns painted to give a marble effect and a two-flight stone, cantilevered staircase.

Having been fully restored by the previous owner, the only major renovations they needed to do after moving in were to the kitchen, which was ripped out and completely re-fitted with a handmade oak floor and units designed by Anthony Nixon Furniture, of Barnard Castle.

An electric Aga was installed alongside a breakfast bar with a cherry wood circular chopping block and a limestone-tiled floor with part underfloor heating.

“I love the flooring because it’s full of fossils,” says Ann Marie. “I studied geology at university and you can just sit in the kitchen and gaze at all the fossils. It was my one indulgence. I also love the mixture of oak and cherry-red wood. It works very well.”

One of the rooms they spend a lot of time relaxing in is the morning room, characterised by a huge arched stone fireplace and tall windows.

The first floor has more of a formal feel with high ceilings, original wooden floors and dressed stone fireplaces.

The master bedroom has a dressing room including a window seat and shutters, an en suite bathroom with a free standing cast iron roll-top bath, and a study.

Further along, there are two formal guest rooms and a secondary staircase leading up again. The second floor has a much more contemporary feel with stripped pine floors and a further four bedrooms, as well as a main bathroom.

The third floor is divided into three rooms and could be used as a staff annexe, featuring a bedroom, en suite shower room and a separate studio/gym or playroom.

Ann Marie says it has been taken over by her sons, who are in the ‘post- punk’ rock band called Get Educated.

“It is full of amps and guitars, but we can’t hear them.

There are enough floors between us, thankfully,” she adds.

The sounds of punk music reverberating around the walls couldn’t be further removed from the strict codes of conduct employed in previous years.

Bowes Hall was built during the reign of Elizabeth I by Philip Brunskill, who acquired the rectory and site of the manor of Bowes in 1594. The family held the hall for six generations before it came under new ownership following the marriage of Anne Brunskill to Cornelius Harrison, of nearby Winston, in 1766.

One of the most interesting periods was between 1815 and the early 1820s when George Clarkson ran it as a boys’ school. Bowes Hall is believed to have housed one of the infamous “Yorkshire Schools”, barbarous institutions where, for £20-a-year, unwanted boys were sent out of sight to get out of the way of their parents.

Charles Dickens was inspired to write Nicholas Nickleby after visiting Bowes, and it is thought his visit could have been prompted by the story of a murder at the house itself.

As the story goes, George Clarkson came back from the village’s Unicorn Inn worse for wear one evening, to find Wedgewood, the school usher, still awake in the parlour with several of the older boys. He lost his temper, upon which Mrs Clarkson (also drunk), entered the fray. A struggle ensued between Wedgewood and Mrs Clarkson, the candle went out and the room was plunged into darkness. When Mr Clarkson returned with another light, he found his wife lying dead on the floor. Wedgewood was arrested and charged with murder, but later acquitted because there were no credible (sober) witnesses.

As intrigued as she is by the history, Ann Marie is quick to point out the house is “in no way spooked”.

The main reason the family have now put it up for sale is because their eldest son is going away to university and they are looking for somewhere smaller.

One thing Ann Marie will miss is the garden with its well stocked orchard and vegetable garden, housing everything from sweet peas, French beans and artichokes to apples, cherries, plums, five hens and a cockerel.

“I potter around there most weekends,” she says.

“It’s my pride and joy.”

■ Bowes Hall, Bowes, Barnard Castle DL12 9HU, is for sale with Jackson-Stops & Staff.

Tel: 01325-489948

■Anthony Nixon Furniture Limited, Birch Road, Barnard Castle, DL12 8JR.