The Story Behind the Bowes Museum
This is one of our Teesdale Tales, a true story shaped by art, ambition and kindness, told through the lives of John and Josephine Bowes and the remarkable museum they imagined for Teesdale.
If you are driving into Barnard Castle on a sunny day, it does not take long before you see something remarkable rising above the trees. A tall elegant French style building appears above the rooftops, looking both unexpected and completely at home in Teesdale. That building is the Bowes Museum. And behind it is a warm and very human story, the story of John Bowes and his wife Josephine, a couple whose partnership, love of art and huge generosity changed this quiet corner of the North forever.
John Bowes was born in 1811 in London, the illegitimate son of the tenth Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne. This meant he would not inherit his fathers title, but he did inherit a vast fortune and the estates around Barnard Castle including Streatlam. His childhood was comfortable and privileged and he grew up surrounded by the landscapes of Teesdale, its villages and the people who worked on his family’s land. He later went off to Eton and Cambridge, became a businessman and served as MP for South Durham. Despite the world he moved in he often felt like someone standing slightly apart from high society, wealthy and important but never fully belonging.
Everything changed when he went to Paris. It was there in 1847 that he bought the Theatre des Varietes, a busy glamorous theatre full of music laughter and late nights. Working on that stage was a young French actress and dancer called Josephine Coffin Chevallier, known on stage as Mademoiselle Delorme. She was talented artistic lively and full of charm. John owned the theatre and Josephine lit it up. They met in that colourful creative world and connected instantly through their shared love of art performance and beautiful objects.
They married in 1852 and divided their time between Streatlam Castle in Teesdale and the Chateau du Barry near Paris. Streatlam was grand and traditional with more than twenty bedrooms oak panelled rooms and wide views across the dales, while their French home placed them at the centre of Parisian art and culture. Between the two homes they began collecting paintings ceramics silver textiles clocks and furniture. What started as a shared interest grew into a passion. Josephine in particular had an incredible eye for quality. Curators today say that without her judgement the collection would have looked completely different.
Money was never the problem. John earned a huge income from his family estates coal mines investments in the Jarrow shipyards and from racing. His horses won major races including the Derby. Josephine had earned her own living earlier in life but her greatest gift to the project was her artistic judgement. They were not just buying for themselves. As their shared collection grew so did an idea. What if they built a museum so that people in Teesdale could see the same kind of art that usually appeared only in Paris or London.
It was an extraordinary thought for the eighteen fifties. Most large museums were in capital cities. But John had grown up among the people of this dale and Josephine after years of being welcomed here had grown to love it too. Instead of giving their treasures to a city they decided to create something new. Something grand. Something that would stand in Teesdale forever.
They chose land overlooking Barnard Castle, twenty acres bought at great effort and cost. It was close to Streatlam and looked out across the dale John had known since childhood. They turned to the French architect Jules Pellechet whose design followed the grand civic buildings of Paris. A Newcastle architect John Edward Watson oversaw the construction on site. The stone came from Dunhouse near Staindrop, a creamy Teesdale sandstone that gave the building its warm pale colour.
In November 1869 Josephine laid the foundation stone. She was already unwell and could only touch the trowel but it was her moment. As the walls rose through the eighteen seventies the collection continued to grow. Between them they gathered around fifteen thousand objects, paintings by Canaletto Goya and Boucher, fine French furniture, silver, costumes, tapestries, ceramics and clocks including the famous Silver Swan.
None of this was cheap and they funded it entirely themselves. There were no grants, no committees and no government help. Just one couple investing their energy time and fortune into creating a public museum in a rural district far from the usual centres of art.
People often ask if they planned to live in it. They did not. The museum was always designed as a museum with wide galleries tall ceilings and large storage rooms. Their homes were already Streatlam and the Chateau du Barry. This building had a single purpose which was to be a gift.
They also did not live to see it finished. Josephine died first in 1874 aged only forty nine. John carried on without her, determined to honour what they had started together but he died in 1885. The museum continued under trustees and finally opened to the public in 1892 filled with their collection just as they had planned.
Their story ends in a quiet place behind the trees near the museum grounds. In 1928 both John and Josephine were brought from the vault at Gibside and laid to rest together behind St Marys Catholic Church in Barnard Castle, facing the museum they imagined.
If you want to feel what John and Josephine hoped this place would mean, just spend a moment in the grounds. Stand on the path and look out over the dale, then turn back towards the museum rising behind you. It is easy to sense the intention they left here, that art, generosity and imagination could make even the quietest corner of England feel like a place of wonder.
The Bowes Museum, the remarkable gift John and Josephine Bowes created for the people of Teesdale.
Part of our Discover Teesdale collection, explore the dale’s walks, waterfalls, history and quiet forgotten places.
This story is shaped by real lives and real events, and the museum they created still stands above the town as their lasting gift to Teesdale.
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